


Living Legend

by pfangirl



Category: Tomb Raider & Related Fandoms, Tomb Raider (Video Game), Wonder Woman (Comics), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/F, Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Personal Growth, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pfangirl/pseuds/pfangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her obsessive quest for truth behind the world's greatest legends, adventurer Lara Croft seeks out Themyscira, the long-isolated island home of the Amazons. There she meets a young princess desperately curious about Man's World. Set in the Can't Go Home/Easier to Run universe, pre- the latter's epilogue. Wonder Woman influences are George Perez, Gail Simone, Grant Morrison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Where the hell did they keep coming from?_

Every time she thought she was putting some space between them, movement would flash in the periphery of her vision.

She was no stranger to desperate flights through forest, but she was the alien here. She felt like a dainty reedbuck trying to outmanoeuvre a pack of wolves. Dire wolves.

She couldn't do anything until she somehow achieved the advantage of distance. If she could dart behind some form of cover, or vanish into a tree's foliage, she might be able to formulate a proper plan.

Because she knew she wouldn't be able to sustain her survival mode sprint for much longer. Her ribs were practically vibrating with the thrum of her heart. The sensation repeated in her skull, making it difficult to think.

_Keep, it together, Lara. Just –_

Something wrapped around her calves.

Her yell was reflex. And far too loud.

"Shit!"

Her momentum carried her forward, off her feet. She hit the earth chest-first, just missing a root that would have fractured bone.

Winded and shaken, she was in that instant grateful for her body's adrenalin-fuelled autopilot. It was second nature to her now. Conscious thought became completely unnecessary.

Her hand groped for the combat knife on her belt. A second later it swiped at what had tripped her: a bola clamped around her legs.

Then she was back on her feet.

Four stumbled steps and she was running again.

"Outsider!"

The speaker couldn't be more than two yards behind her.

She refused to look back. That had been Orpheus's undoing. The same for Lot's wife.

Forward, and only forward. That was the way to survive.

She grabbed at a tree branch as she belted past.

It belonged to a beech that was trying to shoulder up among its larger siblings. It was young. Supple.

She released it.

A yelp behind her.

Followed by a snarl.

_How many times could she get away with that trick?_

The answer was an arrow that skimmed her left shoulder.

_Zig-zag, Lara. Play the bloody buck._

The terrain was flattening out. Roots and rocks sank back into the earth. Without having to watch every step, she could move faster. Of course, the same went for her pursuers, and they knew the terrain. She was running blind.

"Oh."

She'd barged through a wall of bush and found herself free of the tree line.

After the shadows and dappled light of the forest, the sun dazzled her.

Unable to risk slowing down, she continued to sprint even without eyes.

It was almost too late when she realised where she was.

She skidded to a stop inches from the bluff's edge.

She hissed at the drop-off before her – a good sixty foot plunge into a river that had helped carve out the valley before her.

"Outsider…"

Reluctantly, Lara turned.

Three women stood on the edge of the clearing. All three wore short chiton of the masculine style, cut halfway between knee and groin. All three also wore scowls.

They clutched bow, bola and spear respectively.

Lara's fingers skimmed the choices on her belt.

As she did so, the women tensed.

The archaeologist didn't have any other option.

She swallowed.

Then she turned and leapt.

* * *

During her plunge, time could have stopped. There was no single thought in her skull; no sensation in her limbs. She didn't even breathe.

Only once she hit the water feet first did her survival instincts re-activate.

Along with a snarky inner monologue.

_You always said you were willing to die for the truth._

Well, that wasn't going to be today if she could help it.

She preserved her energy until she reached the maximum depth of her dive; then used her arms to haul herself to the surface. Her legs were too tired to offer any real contribution.

She kept herself low in the water for a while, letting the current carry her away from danger.

She'd been lucky. The point where she joined the torrent had been dredged out by a nearby waterfall. Further along, things shallowed out, and the river became studded with boulders.

She clutched at one of the latter to haul herself out.

Free of the water, she let herself rest for a minute, splayed out on the rock like a lizard, while her heartbeat steadied, and her cargo pants and racerback wicked off the worst of the moisture. Even with water-repellent fabric, and a Speedo for knickers, it was bloody uncomfortable. She was beginning to think that shorts weren't such a bad idea after all.

She'd have to move again in a second but in that moment she let her mind do all the racing.

Get to cover. Hole up out of sight. After dark, reassess the situation. If they wouldn't stop searching for her – a very likely possibility – she may have to retreat to her beach camp and stowed water craft. As relentless as Trinity were, they had nothing on these women.

She needed an entirely new strategy to deal with –

A whistle.

Followed by a second, and a third.

Even with the valley generating and bouncing echoes, the sound was too sharp to be birds.

Her pursuers wanted Lara to know she'd been spotted. They wanted her to run.

They wanted their hunt.

Lara Croft was never one to disappoint.

The Englishwoman pushed herself upright. Grimacing, stiff with fatigue, she lumbered over the sandy river bank toward yet another wall of trees.

Why did she ever think seeking out the island nation of the Amazons was a good idea?

* * *

Inevitably, they corralled her.

She found herself in a clearing that at any other time she would have appreciated with slack-jawed delight.

It was an open-air shrine to Artemis, who was represented by a life-size statue in marble. Sculpted in an emotive Hellenistic style, the goddess of the hunt had been captured mid-stride, with her hair and chiton flapping out behind her.

Artemis was armed with her signature bow and arrow of course; her fingers just starting to loosen on the string as she released on her imagined target. Her brow was clenched in concentration, but the curl of her lip conveyed her simultaneous delight. She was in her element.

The same went for the trio of flesh-and-blood figures standing before the statue.

They weren't the same as the women who had chased Lara to the cliff edge. These women were Amazons in every sense of the word.

Armoured, their gear was a hodgepodge of materials and styles from Mediterranean Antiquity: one wore a typically Greek cuirass in bronze over her tunic; another the hardened leather lorica segmentata of a Roman legionnaire, complete with pteruges skirt; while the third relied solely on the protection of a full-length manica guard strapped to her right arm and shoulder.

The only thing standard to their dress was steel bracers clamped around their forearms, and the fact that they disdained helmets.

The woman in the cuirass – a redhead – stepped forward. Clearly the commander of the band, she pointed her sword at Lara. "Yield."

The archaeologist's body was reacting without her again. She felt her fingers tighten around the climbing axe at her waist. Her thumb skimmed the carabiner catch that kept the tool attached to her belt.

The action didn't go unnoticed by the redhead. Her eyes narrowed as she repeated, "Yield."

Lara glanced around her. She was trapped in an arc of warriors, six or seven strong. They'd advanced since flushing her into the clearing. She'd simply been too distracted by her surroundings to notice.

There was one marginally wider gap between the women, to her left, if she could manoeuvre herself in that direction.

_If._

It felt like she was stuck in a truly awful game of Piggy in the Middle.

She grimaced.

She could sense the women drawing closer from all sides. She scanned over them, trying to gauge their threat level. She didn't fancy her odds. Most were over six foot, with the reach to match. They looked lean, hard, and focused.

Scowls had set on faces as ethnically diverse as their owners' dress.

The archaeologist expected a spearhead to slip between her ribs at any moment.

She tried to make eye contact with the women in turn; keep them at bay purely through strength of will. It was the exact same strategy she used with drivers when crossing the street in Rome.

It didn't lessen her feeling of being fenced in.

_Turning and turning in the narrowing gyre._

She muttered, "You know, I was never bullied at school, but I always imagined it would be something like this."

Lara said it more for her own wry amusement; to distract her from her fears. Though the Amazons obviously knew some English – _somehow_ – their use of it was coarse and monosyllabic. She doubted they understood her.

Of course, her speaking their language was impossible. She'd enjoyed only a few minutes of anthropologist's observation, hidden in bushes by a swimming hole, before she was spotted and the chase began. There'd been no time to even start sampling the stew of archaic languages that was their communication staple.

Lara reassessed her enemies' faces. Most continued to glare at her with distrust. The redhead and a few others were smirking. They evidently had seen straight through her faked fierceness. After all, Lara was the runty lone wolf caught snuffling near a pack den.

The redhead said as much, as she sauntered to the edge of the elevated marble dais she stood upon.

"Small. Scared. Weak."

She flicked her waist-length braid dismissively, before extending her arm to her nearest companion. Her xiphos was immediately replaced with a staff.

Then she descended the handful of steps that tiered the circular platform. All the while she tapped the wood on her palm, and kept her pupils locked on Lara's.

The woman was superior and she knew it. Haughtiness stiffened her manner.

That suited Lara just fine. An arrogant opponent was always to her advantage.

The archaeologist unclipped her axe and held it neutrally next to her left thigh.

The redhead looked completely unperturbed. "Yield," she breathed.

Lara's response was to snatch the pistol from her thigh holster and point it at the woman. She would have preferred the intimidation factor of a bow, but her composite was back in its case at the campsite.

Her hope was that maybe she could still dazzle the women with technology. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court had been one of her favourite reads as a child.

"Stop." She fumbled for the word in Old Ionic Greek, not knowing any Scythian or Sarmatian – the historically better options.

The Amazon looked at her like she had whipped out a live trout.

Grinning, the redhead prattled off something to her companions, and a few of them chuckled.

Lara tried again. "No… war. Pea–"

The staff jabbed towards her chest.

Lara leapt to her left, firing twice.

The redhead's arms shot up before her face and torso.

Two clangs.

Lara's reflection gaped back at her from the Amazon's raised metal cuffs.

_Deflecting bullets? You have got to be kidding?_

The redhead lowered her arms, revealing her sneer had broadened into a self-satisfied grin.

An instant later she lashed out again at archaeologist.

Lara was too stunned by impossibility to react fast enough.

The ash pole came down on her extended forearm. Right on the radial nerve point.

"Fuck!"

Her fingers turned to sausage, and she dropped her gun.

A swift second thrust drove into Lara's solar plexus. She was as unable to resist folding as she was to losing her weapon.

So she was bent over when the redhead redirected her swipe. The staff came back at Lara like a golf swing. The edge clipped her under the chin, and her head snapped back.

The momentum sent her sprawling on her back.

_Christ, Larson Conway didn't hit as hard as that._

She lay there for a moment, waiting for the earth to resume its usually imperceptible rotation.

Her eyes were stinging and streaming.

She couldn't decide which was viler: the taste of blood or her throbbing, freshly-bitten tongue.

All the while, laughter rang out around her.

There were few things as effective in sobering her. Anger was Lara Croft's purest motivator. Even if, in hindsight, she almost always regretted her actions while under its influence.

Hers were always the darkest, bloodiest benders.

The Englishwoman spat red from between her lips. Then she pushed herself onto her elbows.

The redhead stepped up to Lara, and prodded the brunette's boot with her staff in fresh warning.

"Down!"

Lara sighed heavily. "I see you're deadset on that one-star TripAdvisor review."

She seized a handful of dirt and flung it at the woman's face.

That finally buried her smug expression.

As the redhead flailed backwards, Lara drew on her fury to drive forward.

Snarling, on her feet, she seized the base of the staff in her right hand, and rammed the weapon's full length at the Amazon's face.

The redhead jerked her head sideways to avoid the blow.

Her eyes shot wide a heartbeat later when she realised the charge was a feint. Lara's left arm swung in with her climbing axe, straight towards the woman's collar bone.

The Amazon grabbed the staff in both hands as the tip passed her ear. She tugged it perpendicular to her chest, just hooking the pole beneath the axe head before it found flesh.

But Lara had already abandoned that attack.

A second feint.

Robbed of the staff, the archaeologist's right hand darted for her combat knife. She slashed back, catching the redhead on the cheek.

The Amazon howled.

Lara stood there, doubly ringed – by silence and by warrior women evidently paralysed with shock that the lone wolf had bloodied their alpha.

The redhead lashed out in retaliation with her staff.

The action jarred Lara's axe from her fingers, and flung the archaeologist backwards.

She slammed into one of the man-size chunks of marble that marked the perimeter of the clearing.

Lara didn't feel the impact.

Her adrenaline had been fully recharged by the hand-to-hand scuffle.

Physical sensation was smothered. She registered that she still clutched her knife, though. And that she had received the unexpected gift of distance.

Fight or flight?

Her body made the decision for her.

She vaulted over the marble.

And in keeping with her ever-spectacular luck, landed in a bramble patch.

_Time to test that numbness._

Lara forced her way through the knotted barbs, stabbing with her blade and grabbing with her left hand. The brambles grabbed back at her with equal viciousness, clawing her arms, shoulders and cheeks.

Red spots and streaks multiplied over her skin like a hideous allergic reaction.

With one final shove, she found herself clear of the tangle, and back among trees.

It was probably a bad idea, but she paused for a second to settle the tremor in her legs. Fists on her knees, she swallowed repeatedly, trying to flush the rawness from her throat despite the lingering, sickening taste of blood.

_Get to camp, Croft._

She checked the compass dial on her watch and started to trot again. If she followed a wide arc back, she might have more opportunities to throw her pursuers. She needed every single advantage if she was to make it to safety.

Leaves rustled to her right. But something was off about the sound. There was a weight behind it that no human could generate. She could feel the earth shuddering under her boots.

Her limbs stiffened as an awful thought slapped her.

There weren't bears in this place, were there?

She hated those buggers.

The vibrations beneath her spaced out into a distinct pounding rhythm. The rustling grew louder. It was joined by the sound of snapping branches… and snorting.

Unquestionable animal snorting.

Lara started to run.

Her knife felt wholly inadequate, but she still tightened her grip on it.

She'd got about ten yards when a beast bounded over the bush to her right and landed heavily in front of her.

It reared up, cycling its legs.

Lara's mouth dropped open in stunned realisation of what she was looking at.

Another Amazon – a dark-haired young woman wearing a turquoise tunic and silver circlet – was astride the creature.

Inattentive eyes would have simply interpreted the woman's mount as a thoroughbred – a very impressive specimen, well-muscled, with a pure white coat and height of over 16 hands.

Except, it wasn't a horse.

From its forehead jutted a foot-long horn in a material like mother of pearl.

A unicorn.

The archaeologist was staring at a sodding unicorn.

While Lara gawked, the woman yelled.

"Artemis!"

Something struck Lara's crown.

She was too well acquainted with the sensation.

A split-second where it felt like her brain tissue was being branded.

In that instant her body transmuted into base metal.

She dropped.

The hit had knocked all sense from her except one.

She could hear her frenetic breathing, and movement around her. Feet crunching leaves and underbrush. Voices hissed in the mangled tongue she was in no state to translate.

The tone of their words was easy enough to decipher though.

Anger.

While external sounds came with a muffling side order of tinnitus, Lara's own voice was clear between her ears.

_Run._

She tried to push herself upright. Grimacing, locking out her elbows, she got about halfway there. Her legs just weren't cooperating.

While she held cobra position, a tunnel of vision opened before her. Colour was muted, and everything blurred, but she could still identify the unicorn-rider. The young woman had dismounted and was gazing down on the archaeologist. The redhead stood next to her. Both held swords.

Behind them, nothing but smears of flesh and coloured fabric, stood the other Amazons; maybe a dozen.

The rider appeared startled that Lara was looking at her. But there was something else in her wide blue eyes as well.

_Pity?_

Lara's arms quivered, and gave out.

Her temple struck the ground. And her fight finally ended in blissful darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

She bristled with determination still.

Even while Artemis and others marched her into the amphitheatre.

Even while she was pale, wincing and freshly revived.

Diana glanced at her mother, hoping to read her reaction to the outsider. However, as usual, the queen of the Amazons veiled her feelings behind decorum. Her expression would be set to pure neutrality until judgment had been passed.

Diana was under no such obligation.

She was fascinated by the fragile but feisty mortal.

The brunette's arrival was the most exciting thing that had happened on Themyscira in decades. It had been a thrilling day ever since Mala burst into the young princess's bedroom that morning with the news that an outsider was on the island.

Diana had never seen a mortal before. Well, in the flesh, as opposed to those exceptionally rare occasions when her mother let her gaze on Man's World through the Sphere curtained in her chambers.

The brunette was nothing like the women Diana had been shown through the portal. Those "educational" exposures portrayed the female sex outside Themyscira as one of two things: desperately impotent or wilfully frivolous. In either case, their agency was suffocated.

Diana struggled to look on such extreme losses of potential. She felt it as physical pain. Eventually, unable to manage the hurt, she had stopped asking her mother to be included in the viewing sessions.

Of course, she had little doubt that was Queen Hippolyta's intention all along. It was only ever done out of love, and a desire to protect, but the Amazonian leader would prod at her daughter's heart if it meant Diana was discouraged from satisfying her curiosity about life outside paradise.

Except that curiosity had been fanned back to full blazing strength by the day's events – from the moment the alarm sounded that there was an invader in their land. Since then, the very air of Themyscira seemed to crackle with something more foreign than the outsider.

Unpredictability.

What Diana knew of the women in Man's World did not match what was before her.

Even with her choice of masculine dress – boots and grubby trousers – the brunette was as beautiful as any of Diana's Amazon sisters. At least beneath the dirt, sweat and dried blood. Her exposed skin had been badly clawed as a result of her flight through the brambles. A couple of the wounds on her arms were still glistening red. One particularly long scratch arced over her left eyebrow. Diana could see it even from where she stood in the royal podium box, to the left of her mother.

Despite being so small and slight, the woman was a fighter; it was obvious. She was groggy, and hurt, yet her eyes darted around in search of an escape. Tension rippled visibly through her legs. At any moment, she was ready to run.

It was madness.

She had been doubly disarmed: her weapons were gone, and her wrists bound before her.

In addition, she was standing in the Amazonian court – the trial arena. The entire population of the island had gathered. How could she think she had any chance at fleeing? Yet, that was what she was prepared to do.

As her escort tried to force her into a kneeling position on the judgement circle, the woman shrugged one shoulder free of their grip.

The red-haired captain of the guard put an end to the defiance with a swipe of her staff. The wood connected with the back of the outsider's knees. They buckled. She went down, yowling.

Hands immediately clamped on her shoulders to keep her in place.

Still, the brunette's head popped up. Her eyes met the princess's as they had in the forest. And just as in the forest, in that instant the woman's anger was replaced by astonishment. Her brow unclenched; her jaw slackened.

Diana felt a further set of eyes on her. Her mother had noticed the look pass between her daughter and the invader. There was a flash of a frown from the queen, but this was neither the time nor place for parental admonishment. Diana was safe… for now.

The outsider muttered something. The amphitheatre's architecture amplified acoustics, enabling her words to reach the podium as if hand-delivered by Hermes.

It was broken and strangely accented, but the woman was speaking Old Greek.

"Hospy-it-allee-tee…."

Diana saw her mother's nostrils flare imperceptibly. Evidently she was as surprised as her daughter about the choice of language.

Then the queen responded. In English.

She addressed the woman, "There is no need for that. We speak your tongue."

"Alright," the brunette muttered. "I was saying Amazonian hospitality leaves _a lot_ to be desired."

The captain of the guard backhanded her. "Show respect!"

Hippolyta yelled, "Artemis!"

Immediately the redhead dropped her gaze to her feet; the scolded dog.

The woman meanwhile looked like she was barely clinging to consciousness.

The force of the blow took balance from her. She toppled sideways. Only the Amazons restraining her prevented her from crumpling completely. They caught and righted her, while she tried to shake her head clear. That could not have been pleasant given the recent blow she received. For a heartbeat, Diana saw through the veneer of ferocity.

The woman was shaken. Clearly in pain.

Hippolyta spoke again. "Hospitality is reserved for guests. Which you are not."

The brunette straightened her mask of persona, and glared at Artemis. "Clearly."

"And yet," the queen added, "despite being unwelcome, you are here. Caught skulking and spying on my people. Attacking them." She cocked her head in Artemis's direction, and once more the redhead dipped her head in shame. The slash on her cheek seemed to grow redder in that instant.

Hippolyta sighed, "You are fortunate you are not a man or you would have already been executed for such a blatant act of aggression."

The woman's lips parted with a retort. But she swiftly locked them as Artemis's fist clenched ominously by her cheek.

Before tempers could snap a further time, everyone's attention was drawn to a new entrant to the arena. Philippus, ever a majestic figure in her purple robes and many gold adornments, stepped out from the stairwell that led to the podium. Until then, she had been standing to the queen's right side, in keeping with her status as chancellor and royal consort.

Diana knew the procedure, as did all the other onlookers. However, murmurs still rippled through the amphitheatre. It was a hallowed, rarely practised rite they were about to witness.

Philippus carried in her outstretched arms the most sacred of Amazon relics.

The most powerful.

The chancellor held up the holy gift from the Goddesses. Lifting it above her head – making her willowy figure appear even longer than her afternoon shadow – she presented it first to her Amazon sisters. Then to her queen. Finally, she turned to the row of statues representing Athena, Aphrodite, Artemis, Hestia and Demeter.

Philippus's circling action invited the late afternoon sunlight to dance along the relic. Every coil seemed alive, pulsing and writhing, like it was part of a living thing. A mighty serpent.

It was magnificent.

The outsider did not seem to share that opinion, however.

She was eying the treasure with suspicion.

Rightly.

Philippus did not say a word. She approached the brunette, and began to wind the golden cord around her wrists, over the rope that already restrained her.

Hippolyta was the one who offered an explanation.

"This is the Lasso of Truth. Custom dictates that you will be bound with it while you are questioned. To ensure the honesty of your answers."

The bemused woman responded, "Whatever happened to a simple _please_?" Then she frowned in Artemis's direction. "Or threats at sword point?"

Having completed her task, Philippus stepped backwards. She nodded to her queen.

Hippolyta began. "What is your name?"

The woman jerked in her restraints.

"Hyurk," she gurgled, as her eyes focused in disbelief on the Lasso.

She was fighting it. She was struggling against loving submission as Diana's mother had once told her all non-Amazons would do.

Hippolyta warned the woman, "The greater your resistance, the greater your suffering."

"Hnnggh." The brunette gritted her teeth. The tendons in her neck strained.

Then, slowly, the words came, as if a spring had been tapped deep within her. The stream forced opened her jaw; flowed over her lips.

"L-Lara…" the woman grimaced. "Croft. The… The Countess of Abbingdon." She shook her head, hissing at herself. "Christ."

Hippolyta's brow furrowed. "You are of noble blood? An aristocrat in Man's World?"

"Yes."

"You are not what I expect of a countess. Where is your finery?"

"I'm not what anyone expects of a countess."

"Hmm, this is true." Hippolyta pursed her lips. "Where are you from, Lara Croft?"

"England. Southern England. Surrey."

The words started to run more freely. A veritable waterfall. But Diana could see the alarm in the woman's eyes. Free will had been taken from her.

"Who are you spying for, Lara Croft?"

"No one."

"Not one of the governments of Man's World?"

"No."

"You are not military?"

"No."

"Then why are you here?"

Every question and answer was followed by a murmur in the amphitheatre, as some of the strongest English speakers translated for the other Amazons.

Lara Croft attempted a fresh bout of silent defiance. The way her body juddered suggested massive discomfort, like she was trying not to be sick.

Diana could see her mother was losing patience.

Hippolyta clasped the balcony railing in her hands and leaned forward.

"I ask _again_ , Lara Croft, why are you here?"

With such a direct interrogation, the outsider was compelled to answer. Her shoulders sagged as she exhaled into her chest, "Truth."

"Explain."

"Answers." Lara lifted her head and gazed directly at the queen. "I search for answers behind the stories; the legends."

"How admirable of you. How well-intentioned," Hippolyta declared. "Then why do you bring implements of destruction to Themyscira?"

The outsider's face blanched. "What?"

In response, one of Artemis's unit stepped forward. Hazel-eyed Venelia.

She cast Lara Croft's weapons on the ground, where everyone – including the brunette –could see them. Then the Amazon upended the pack that had been stripped from the woman when she was finally subdued.

Venelia used the butt of her spear to spread out the items.

Two pistols. A knife. A strange red-handled axe. Field glasses. A small box of healing supplies. A leather-bound book sealed in a transparent bag. And an electronic device that the princess recognised from her studies as a camera.

Hippolyta frowned, "You carry such equipment, yet you expect us to believe your intentions are peaceful?"

"They are." Lara shook her head. "What I carry is for survival only. They're tools of my trade."

"And what trade is that? What does the Countess of Abbingdon do, apart from appearing where she is neither invited nor welcome?"

"I'm an archaeologist."

Hippolyta's disdain evaporated. "What is that?"

"A – A historian of sorts. I piece together the past – its forgotten, or dismissed, secrets – by uncovering and examining physical remains."

"These archeo-historians carry weapons?"

Lara sighed heavily. "I'm not a conventional archaeologist."

"How did you find us?"

"Months of trawling through maritime records: centuries of shipping logs, naval reports and captains' private journals. I started with the ancient texts to place the Amazon homeland east, beyond the borders of Greek Civilisation. Then I narrowed the search to one tiny patch of the Black Sea with a notorious reputation."

The woman's eyelids turned leaden with fatigue as she was obliged to continue. "Millennia of navigational abnormalities. Mysterious winds and storms that appear from nowhere to throw vessels off course. General disappearances. Strange communication signals… I pieced together all the clues, and together they pointed here."

The murmur of the Amazon onlookers deepened into thunder.

Hippolyta voiced their concerns. "Others know what you know?"

"No. I work alone."

"How did you get here?"

"I chartered a boat."

"They brought you to the island?"

"No. They took me to the coordinates I provided, off a shipping lane. From there I piloted my own craft."

Diana wondered if her mother was as impressed as she was. It was phenomenal that this small, fragile woman of Man's World had solved the great mystery of their location, and wilfully sailed alone into the unknown. Failure was obviously entwined with death – a horrible death alone at sea – yet she had borne the risk. Piercing through the Goddesses' veil of protection, she had found her way to Themyscira.

Yet Hippolyta did not look awed. Her expression was as ominous as one of the storms Lara Croft had spoken of.

"Your vessel is here on the island, now?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

Lara swallowed, "From this place, I don't know."

"Landmarks?"

"A – a natural bay. Crescent shaped. Shielded by a cliff on the right if you're facing it from the water. The tides have eaten away the rock at the base, so it looks like a poorly hewn temple front." Lara concluded by cursing herself. " _Shit."_

A faint smile touched Hippolyta's lips. "Thank you for such a precise, eloquent description. It is very helpful." She added, "Your vessel is at this location?"

"Pulled up to the tree line, yes. Hidden by branches."

"And is that all you have brought to our island?"

Lara started to stammer violently. "M-m-m-my camp. The rest of my equipment."

"Where?"

"Two miles into the forest from the boat. North west. An outcropping."

A silent relay of commands initiated. Hippolyta nodded to Artemis, who turned to four of her warriors. The women immediately trotted for the arena exit.

Lara watched them depart with despair. Sweat glistened on her skin – the natural consequence of her efforts to resist the Lasso's magic. She looked ill, like she was being forced to function through a fever.

Diana wanted the interrogation to end. It had become cruel. Punishment. Everything had been taken from the woman.

The princess tried to catch her mother's eye, but Hippolyta was still focused on the outsider.

"Tell me what you intended to do here, Lara Croft?"

"Study you. Document the wonders of your world."

Hippolyta's jaw clenched. "You would tell others about us?"

"They wouldn't believe me. They _never_ believe me. But yes."

"And you seek to steal from us? Take our wonders?"

"N – Nuh – maybe."

Hippolyta went silent.

Lara stared at the queen, expectant.

All of the Amazons did. Even Philippus, who had a better understanding of Hippolyta's mind than anyone, including Diana.

A hush settled on the amphitheatre while everyone waited for their frozen leader.

Eventually the queen turned and strode from the podium.

Moments later she appeared on the arena floor.

A fresh swell of murmurs.

Hippolyta approached the judgement circle. As expected, Artemis pressed her sword against Lara's throat, producing a fresh wince from the outsider.

The brunette clamped her eyes shut, before opening them again to return the queen's cool, close-up assessment.

Diana recognised it as a meeting of leopard and tiger. At their core, the women were the same species. One creature was simply out of its environment. And desperately out of its league.

Hippolyta extended her arm. "Shall we look into your soul, Lara Croft?"

It was Diana's turn to clench the balcony railing. Only Hippolyta was permitted to wield the second, controversial power of the Lasso.

The Amazons were a hardy people, essentially immortal, so the issue was irrelevant to them, but there had been much debate as to whether it was ethical to subject mortals to the trauma of forced self-examination. It was unknown if the fragile human psyche could stand such a violation.

The queen unwound the end of the Lasso from Lara's wrists, and held it in both of her own palms.

Her expression hardened as she murmured, "Who are you really, Lara Croft?"

Hippolyta's fingers closed around the rope.

The brunette's body tensed involuntarily. Any bravado still bottled within her evanesced as the queen entered her mind.

Lara's eyes shot wide. "What – What are you doing?"

"Do not resist."

The outsider cried out. Her body jerked, snapping her skull back. When she hauled her head forward again, all focus had gone out of her pupils. She was blind; lost somewhere within herself.

Hippolyta muttered, "Submit."

Lara's chest was heaving. "No. Please, not this…Not again."

She grimaced, and folded double as if her stomach had cramped. "Nnnnggghhh."

Such agony.

Diana watched blood snake from the woman's nostrils.

Lara keened, "Pleeeeease. Stop! I can't… _Fuck!_ "

She arched back. Shrieking.

_Enough of this._

Diana yelled, "Mother, you're hurting her!"

It was as if Hippolyta was a statue.

The princess vaulted the railing and dropped two fathoms to the ground.

As she straightened out of her landing, she yelled again. Louder, trying to drown out the suffering mortal.

"Mother, _STOP_!"

Just then, Hippolyta screamed.

She dropped the Lasso and stumbled backwards. Losing her balance completely, she fell to the ground.

"My queen!" Philippus darted forward.

It was chaos. Voices hollered in and around the amphitheatre. Amazons were on their feet.

Their queen was not.

Neither was the outsider. Lara Croft lay face-down, unmoving.

Diana rushed to the mortal's side. Immediately she tugged off the Lasso. She had just managed to locate Lara's fluttering pulse when Artemis and Venelia heaved the unconscious woman upright and away from the princess.

Diana was ready to rebuke the captain of the guard when her mother spoke.

"Be calm, sisters! By the Goddesses, _be calm_!"

Propped up in Philippus's arms, the queen was trembling – but her voice remained as rigid as a rod of iron.

Her gaze flicked between her daughter and the prisoner.

A moan informed Diana that Lara was coming to. Her eyelids lifted a crack, before drooping once more.

Hippolyta didn't wait for the woman to fully return to her senses.

The queen of the Amazons announced, "You will have your truth, Lara Croft. As much as your heart can stand. For as is law on Themyscira, you are forbidden to leave. This island paradise is your home now. For the remainder of your days."

Hippolyta waved her hand in Artemis's direction. "Take her away."


	3. Chapter 3

The images cycled over and over. And then over and over again.

She hadn't felt anything like it since the aftermath of Yamatai, when she was so desperately ill – first on the rescue ship, and then in the Osaka hospital.

Vivid fever dreams.

Every scene at Technicolor levels of saturation. And she couldn't shut off the cinema reel. She was strapped in, unable to look away from the screen.

All the worst moments of her life played on repeat, melting into the next. Or they were cruelly punctuated with her happiest memories.

Bedtime stories with dad; those rare instances when she had his undivided attention.

Followed by that time as an 11-year old when she first realised she was alone in the world – an orphan in her boarding school uniform.

A decade later, drowning, trapped below deck as the Endurance sank in that awful storm. How she pounded the glass until her body gave up and she sucked in water.

Everything about that bloody island. So much pain.

That was the worst part – the nightmare wasn't simply a series of visions lifted from her past. Every aspect of every memory came back to her, like she was reliving them.

So she could smell the gut-churning sewage she was forced to wade through.

Taste her blood, and the blood of the Solarii as they came in close, and she slaughtered them.

Hear Sam's shrieks over the mountain winds once Mathias's transference ceremony began.

She felt _everything_ : her stomach being torn from her during the helicopter's plunge, the touch of red hot metal as she cauterised herself.

What it was like to slide a blade into human flesh – how the sensation passed from her weapon into her arm.

She relived a hundred deaths – a thousand – delivered by her hands. She recalled dying herself, glimpsing the hell that awaited her.

There was Sam, gazing up at her with adoration; then _terrified_ of her; furious at her; sobbing because of her.

Mostly, Lara was falling. Endlessly leaping and falling.

_Help me. Help me. Pleeeease. Help me…._

She couldn't get the words out. They were as trapped in her skull as she was.

One heartbeat later, she could feel herself sliding down a cliff face, clawing with one hand, hacking with her climbing axe in the other. All the while, her skin flamed as it was flayed from her.

Falling. Falling…

* * *

She strained against the hallucinations until, finally, the straps binding her broke.

She opened her eyes.

And refused to believe the world could be so quiet and peaceful.

She was lying on a kline in a cool, sparsely furnished room. The overall effect was one of elegant Mediterranean simplicity. It reminded her of a guesthouse she had once treated herself to while island hopping around the Cyclades. White walled, with stone flooring that looked like wet beach sand, the only striking colour in the chamber belonged to a vast hanging tapestry, and a bowl of fruit placed on a nearby table.

Lara pushed herself into a sitting position on the mattress, and immediately cringed. Her headache was tear-inducing.

"Christ."

She clutched her face in her hands. And cringed again when fingertips met a swollen right cheek.

It wasn't the only part of her that ached. She'd been in enough vehicle crashes – terrestrial and otherwise – to associate the stiffness in her neck, back and shoulders with whiplash. Tentatively, she tried to restore some mobility. That only stoked the embers shovelled into every muscle.

She groaned as they caught alight.

_You really need to stop getting caught, Lara_.

A sensation of tightness below her breasts caused her to look down. She drew aside the wool blanket still covering her trunk.

She'd been stripped to her sports bra and knickers, but a linen bandage circled her lower ribs. Her captors had evidently washed and doctored her. The scratches over her bare arms would have looked far angrier if that weren't the case.

For all the ministrations though, her skin was glistening, and the cloth soaked through with sweat.

As she started to prod at the bandage, two mottled faces flashed before her.

"You killed our brother…"

A fist swung in.

She jerked sideways to dodge the blow. And tumbled from the bed.

Immediately, she turtled, trying to shield herself against the inevitable kicks.

They never came.

When she opened her eyes again, she was alone with her ragged breathing and a fresh coat of perspiration.

_What the hell was wrong with her?_

The answer was a split-second inhalation of fragrance she associated with her mother.

Lara's racing heart broke into a sprint.

Maybe all those concussions had finally caught up with her.

Was she finally damaged beyond repair?

That terrifying possibility propelled her to her feet. She couldn't let herself entertain it.

Overthought – despair – was paralysis.

Action. Action was useful.

Except her body refused to cooperate. She was trembling violently, and after the first few staggered steps she almost collapsed. Blood thrummed in her ears. At the same time it felt as if fingers of ice were crawling over her skin.

Something was very, very wrong.

In confirmation, her father's face appeared out of the air. He wore the same proud smile he always did when they discussed archaeology together.

She blinked and she was looking at Roth – watching his reassuring smile slacken, and the light fade from his eyes.

A further blink and it was Vladimir. His face twitched like a shoddily made animatronic; his mouth opening and closing on repeat. Except he was flesh. And blood. And bone. Lara could see it all.

Her bullet had blasted a chunk out of his skull, and she was gazing on his brain matter.

It was more than that. She could smell it; feel it on her face along with his blood, sticky and coppery.

It was her first time all over again.

Nausea struck as a rogue wave.

It drove her across the room, scrambling for anything; anything to –

She upended the fruit bowl and vomited into it.

In the aftermath, once she had spat the lingering taste of bile from between her lips, she sank down to her knees.

_I'm going mad._

Her skin continued to prickle, and she pressed her forehead against the table for its cool, tangible reassurance. It was her life raft in the insanity.

What had those women _done_ to her?

She knew the answer.

_That bloody Lasso._

* * *

When they bound her and started to question her, the sensation had been bizarre. Her head started swimming, as if she had just crossed the threshold into drunkenness. Her inhibitions, normally like ice walls, melted. Except, the sensation of carefree euphoria she associated with tipsiness was absent.

She registered that she was dangerously exposed; compliant. And it terrified her.

Lara was a control freak – dozens of people had called her out on it throughout her life; Sam most of all.

The archaeologist had never denied it.

Under the influence of the Lasso, though, she was definitely not in control. She fought it. But ultimately it was easier to swim with the current of compulsion.

She would have told the queen anything if asked. Spilled all her secrets. She surprised even herself when she used her title in introduction.

The interrogation had been unpleasant, but it was nothing on what followed. Whatever the queen did once she clasped the golden cord, it felt as if something was pushing inside Lara. Suddenly she was no longer alone in her skin. A second presence spread and suffocated. It forced her backwards, into pitch black corners she usually avoided. Then she was held there while the memories oozed over her like scalding tar.

That's what they'd done to her.

All those years of compartmentalising events in her life – the treasured and the abhorred. The Amazons had simply torn them from their boxes and flung them together on the floor during their callous home invasion.

* * *

Right.

Lara pushed herself upright.

She was off-kilter, shaking with anxiety, but she understood what was happening to her now. Logic replaced the table as her life raft.

She could use that realisation to keep afloat while she searched for an escape.

Because that was her priority.

There was a single waist-high window in the chamber and she limped towards it.

The shutters were open, allowing her to gaze over a courtyard garden three storeys below. Climbing down to the sunlit greenery and fountains wouldn't be a problem. The real obstacle was the iron lattice set into the window frame.

Lara tugged on the metal. It was immediately clear that it had been plunged deep into the stone. And unlike most of the places she found herself, the masonry was in perfect condition. Even if she had her climbing axe, it wouldn't be enough.

Short of a grenade launcher, she doubted she'd be able to break through.

And she suspected that grenade launchers were in short supply in an Amazonian homeland.

She turned back to the room, and found herself in a torch-lit cave. Something was moving in the shadows, snuffling and snorting. Something big.

Lara knew it was a delusion but it didn't stop the panic attack. She pressed against the wall, clenching her eyes shut – against the vision, and against the suddenly resurgent ache in her back.

Even when she opened her eyes again, and everything had returned to placid normality, the desperate mantra repeated.

_Get out, Lara. You need to get out._

She made for the door.

As she passed the bed, she realised there was a small cedar chest at its foot. Laid on top of it were her clothes. Not the ones she'd been wearing during her scuffle with the Amazons, she noted. This set came from the duffel bag at her camp.

It was probably better not to be running about in her skivvies, so she tugged on the cargo trousers, black V-neck shirt and boots.

Each item presented its own struggle with hurt and fatigue. She was light-headed by the time she finished dressing.

Afterwards, she had to take a moment to steady herself, physically and mentally.

The next stage of the escape was going to be problematic. She was off-form and working blind. Even if the door was unlocked, she had no idea what was on the other side.

An improvised weapon would be to her advantage. However, short of loudly cracking off a table leg, there didn't seem to be anything at hand.

A clay water jug next to the fruit bowl was a viable option, but even then it was better suited for an ambush. She'd have to wait for someone to come check on her, hope to get the jump on them and then disarm them.

That seemed… unlikely.

She was in no condition for a hand-to-hand fight, and if there was more than one warrior woman, her odds of success worsened substantially.

Plus, Lara Croft wasn't patient on the best of days.

She grimaced. She seemed destined to pass her entire life between a rock and a hard place.

It simply couldn't be helped.

Standing before the door, bracing her legs for flight, she took the handle in her clammy palm. It turned without resistance.

The door unlatched silently, and glided towards her.

Beyond, stationed in the brightly lit corridor, were two Amazons. Armoured and armed, they set their glares on Lara.

_Well, shit._

Neither woman strode forward with their spears though. They side-stepped, revealing a third figure who was swinging her legs on a stone bench.

The dark-haired young woman from the forest and arena.

She turned to the archaeologist. Immediately, the Amazon's pensive expression gave way to a smile – as warm as the guards' scowls were cold.

"Oh, you are finally up," she beamed. "Hello."


	4. Chapter 4

As the princess stood, Lara Croft swallowed. "I didn't order room service."

"I have been waiting to tend to your wounds."

Diana forced her smile wider. She wanted to appear reassuring, given the circumstances.

She was unsuccessful. The brunette's scepticism only amplified as she scanned once more over the three Amazons obstructing her path.

Lara's eyebrow arched. "So, I'm not due a fresh round of torture?"

_Torture?_

Diana's smile flickered. "No. I only want to help."

She retrieved her tray of healing supplies from the bench, and held it up so Lara could see the contents.

The woman's distrust refused to melt. She was silent, and as hard set as a chunk of ice.

Almost as pale too. She desperately needed medical attention.

"Please…" the princess coaxed.

Lara sagged against the door frame in response.

"I don't believe I have a choice."

It stung, realising that is what she thought of the Amazon people.

Diana repeated what her mother would have said. "Our concern is your well-being."

The outsider clearly remained unconvinced. She folded her arms. "Of course."

Her voice dripped sarcasm as she added, "Oh, but please, do come in."

As Diana made to move forward, Aella, the senior of the two guards, settled her hand on the young woman's forearm.

Her voice lilted upwards. "Princess?"

No further words were necessary. The full question was obvious.

_Do you think this is wise?_

The princess beamed, "All will be well."

"Your mother said – "

"I know what she said."

Sensing that Aella's expression was moments from crumpling into a scowl, Diana blurted a compromise.

"You can remain outside the chamber if you want."

"It is not what we want, Princess. It is what we were ordered to do."

Diana slathered on an additional layer of placation. "Stay then. I submit to my mother's will. As always. However, I wish to tend to Lara Croft's wounds without an audience… in keeping with her people's culture."

Diana could have commanded the guards away, but that kind of rigid authority never sat as comfortably on her as her mother. They wore different crowns after all.

When it came to dealing with others, the younger royal's strength lay in her natural charisma. It was not like there was anyone for the isolationist Amazons to negotiate with, but Philippus had always insisted that Diana would make a fine ambassador should the situation ever arise.

So the young woman summoned all of her charm, and channelled it into her countenance.

"This will not take long, Aella, I promise."

The guardswoman was stern-faced, but of the girl's hundreds of mothers, she was one of the more soft-hearted. Growing up, Diana remembered many occasions of Aella ignoring the princess's transgressions, covering for her; even presenting her with a hand-carved stag on a festival day to revere the Goddess of the Hunt.

So it was little surprise when the older woman withdrew her palm. "Be careful, Princess," she murmured.

Diana nodded respectfully.

She proceeded to cross the threshold into Lara Croft's chamber, and close the door behind her.

* * *

The little brunette was waiting.

Lara sighed, "So, no chance this is another hallucination then?"

"No. This is your reality now."

Diana meant it as comfort, but it only caused Lara's shoulders to droop. The action seemed to throw her balance and she stumbled.

Diana swooped in, caught the woman with one arm and helped her back to the bed.

When the princess drew back, she found Lara staring ahead of herself.

Blind.

All colour had leeched from her face; even her lips. Her skin felt sticky and hot as if with fever. It was impossible to ignore how rapid both her heartbeat and breathing were.

"Lara?" Diana prompted.

Focus returned to the archaeologist's eyes.

For an instant she looked confused about where she was; who she was with.

"S – Sam?"

Then she blinked, and was back to weary, wary normality.

Diana felt sick. As she suspected, the probing of Lara's soul with the Lasso had been too much. The Amazons had much to account for.

"All will be well," Diana soothed. "You simply require rest. Time to heal."

She presented Lara with the contents of the tray; more specifically a covered bowl. "Right now you need the return of your strength. You have been unconscious since yesterday so I brought you a light broth to start slowly."

She deposited the platter on the mattress and stood. She approached the table.

"If you do not hunger for that, there is some fruit..."

She sighted the oranges, apples and bananas strewn on the floor. Then she saw the bowl itself. "Oh!"

Lara muttered, "Sorry."

Diana's faux cheerfulness drained. "I am the one who should apologise. For what you were subjected to. It was not just."

"Justice and I don't often cross paths."

The princess took the jug from the table and poured a cup of water before returning to Lara. The drink was accepted without a fight.

While the woman slowly sipped, Diana continued, "We have counsellors if you would like to speak to someone."

"I'm not one for talking about my feelings."

There was the maimed leopard again – bristling and defensive.

The last thing Diana wanted was for her companion to retreat once more into sullen rage. That would be to no one's benefit.

Just then, weakened as Lara was, her shield seemed to be down. That gave the princess a small window to reach her heart.

The Amazon shifted aside the tray and seated herself once more next to the outsider.

"My name is Diana."

The brunette wouldn't meet her gaze. "Lara. But I think you already know that?"

"I do."

Lara surprised by continuing the conversation with a question delivered into her cup. "Your mother is the queen?"

"Yes."

"Princess Diana." Lara chuckled over the lip of her drink before taking another sip. "Does your mother know you're with me, Diana?"

The princess thought of Aella's consternated expression. It was impossible for word not to have reached the Amazon queen by now.

"I am certain."

"And she's not worried?"

"For my physical safety, no."

Diana was as beyond the Amazons as they were beyond the women of Man's World. Women like Lara Croft.

The mortal raised an eyebrow. "Are _you_ worried?"

"No, Lara. I do not fear you."

"Maybe you should."

It was the princess's turn to laugh. Among her many advantages over the brunette was a foot in height difference. "I believe I can best you in a fair fight."

A smile curled Lara's lips. "Except, I rarely fight fair."

That was true. Artemis was evidence of that.

Lara coughed, and then grimaced. She swore under her breath.

_Oh._

Diana was forgetting her purpose.

"May I?"

As she reached for the hem of Lara's shirt, the brunette's hand shot out and seized Diana's wrist.

"Don't touch me!"

The feral glare was back in her eye, directed straight through the princess.

Diana waited a few moments for the woman to fight her way free of the delusions.

Lara released her grip with shaking fingers. Her eyes sank down her front. "I'm not normally like this."

"I know."

Diana gently lifted Lara's shirt up over the strange fabric that bound her breasts. She tried to distract the archaeologist with a medical explanation. "I believe you cracked a rib or two, but I could not be sure until you were awake."

"You're a doctor?"

"One of the healers of your world? No. Amazonian curative practices are quite different. But my teacher Althea says I am a gifted."

"Good to know."

Lara grunted a little as Diana started to unwind the bandage from her middle.

The princess shifted behind her patient and assessed the woman's back.

To the right of Lara's spine, a hand-size patch of flesh was discoloured plum and looked moderately swollen.

Diana reached out.

She felt Lara stiffen as she touched her bare skin; heard her breathing quicken.

"Does that hurt?" the princess murmured.

"A – a little."

Every one of the archaeologist's muscles was tensed.

It was far from polite but Diana was unable to resist comment. "You are not accustomed to people taking care of you."

"These days _people taking care of me_ tends to translate as trying to put a bullet in my skull. So I don't have that luxury."

_What a sad way to live._

"I am sorry for you."

"Don't be. I prefer to be self-sufficient. I've had to be, my entire life."

"Well, that is no longer the case."

Lara dipped her head. She exhaled into her breastbone, "Where am I, Diana?"

"In the palace. At least for now. It – " At the very least, Lara Croft was owed honesty. "It makes surveillance easier."

"Surveillance. Of course."

The reasoning behind the chosen quarters was not solely nefarious, however. Diana attempted to convey that point. "And it seemed fitting for your station in Man's World. You are of noble blood, yes?"

"God, I said that, didn't I?" Lara shook her head.

"You sound ashamed."

"I didn't earn my _station_. I was simply born into it. Into privilege. That knowledge has shadowed me my entire life."

"I understand. Probably more so than anyone else on Themyscira, I imagine. My mother _made_ me."

Lara shrugged, "We're all products of our parents. Some more than others."

Of course the outsider would not fully understand. She could not. She came from a world that had long ago spurned the old gods and their magic.

Diana realised that Lara had turned her head and was coolly appraising her companion's features.

The brunette stated simply, "It appears we have something in common: we're both daughters with a striking resemblance to our mothers. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and all that."

_And if the tree summoned the apple straight from the earth?_

Diana could feel her mood darkening as the old tainted concerns seeped through to the forefront of her mind. That was not what Lara Croft needed exposure to just then.

So the princess forced the thoughts back into the shadows, where they belonged.

She snatched up a small pot from the tray, scooped out some of the paste inside with her fingertips and dapped it on a square of cloth. She then pressed it to the purple patch on Lara's back.

The brunette shuddered as the cool poultice made contact with her flesh.

Diana took the woman's nearest hand and directed it to the compress.

"Can you hold this here? I want to draw out the deepest bruising."

Refreshingly, there was no fight from Lara. She simply nodded.

Diana sank to her knees in front of the archaeologist.

"The damage is not as severe as it could have been. You are very lucky."

That seemed to amuse Lara. A smirk tweaked her lips.

Diana continued, "You will heal, however you need to rest; limit your exertion for the next few weeks. I will leave your ribs unbound, but there will be routine application of ointments and other treatments."

Lara frowned, "You don't have to do all this, Princess."

"I do."

Diana retrieved another pot. She extracted a streak of lime green salve and gently smoothed it over Lara's discoloured right cheek. As she attempted the same with the tear above the brunette's brow, Lara Croft's eyes locked onto hers.

"So I'm your patient. But am I also your prisoner?"

The young woman's lips shaped momentarily into a "no." Then she reconsidered.

Truth was always best.

Teeth-gritted, she murmured, "You will enjoy the same freedom of movement as any of my people. But you are being monitored."

"Ah."

"The trust of the Amazons must be earned."

"And if I step out of line? Will I be executed?"

"No. The Amazons do not kill outside of battle."

Lara cocked her head. "Well, unless a man found himself here."

"That is so."

That was something Diana disagreed with vehemently, but she knew not to vocalise such a difference in opinion to her mother. Or anyone else for that matter. Amazonian strength was rooted in love, obedience and unity.

"What would happen to me, Diana?" Lara continued to stare at her, expectantly.

"You – you would be imprisoned. In one of our cells. Punishment through incarceration is not foreign to us."

"Neither is it for me," Lara replied. "How long are people locked up for?"

"It would depend on the transgression. Some of our sisters are there… permanently."

"What did they do?"

"Different things. Attempted regicide. The plotted instigation of civil war."

"I guess there really is no such thing as Paradise."

The archaeologist sounded so incredibly tired.

Diana could see Lara sinking into herself. It was the princess's responsibility to haul her free of the despondency that was too much like quicksand.

"But let us not talk of such things. Let us concentrate on making you well."

_In body and mind._

The former would be easy. The latter – particularly while the outsider was limited to her chamber – would be far more of a challenge. Like her spirit animal, Lara Croft needed space and open skies. Cages, even invisible ones, set her on edge; and lashing out as she had already done would only plunge her into deeper trouble.

"This is no good," the princess muttered aloud.

She straightened, and Lara gazed up at her.

"What is?"

"Let us get some broth in you," Diana declared. "Then a visit to the pools."

"The what?" Lara's forehead creased with distrust.

"Hot springs, I believe you call them?"


	5. Chapter 5

She'd been to an onsen in Japan. Once, during a uni holiday with Sam. However, the awkwardness of that experience had nothing on what was before her now. Dozens of gorgeous women in various state of undress wandered about and waded in steaming pools.

Lara rubbed her forehead, insistent that she was hallucinating again.

_Castle Anthrax. I'm in Castle Anthrax._

Worse was that when the archaeologist drew near, many Amazons turned and looked. Laughter and smiles were washed away in a tide of murmurs and frowns.

Lara was aware that there were a good half dozen reasons for them to stare. She was a notorious outsider. Her dress screamed _Other_ in this world. Behind her trailed the two guards who had been stationed outside her room. And the Amazon princess – the heir to the magical island kingdom – walked at her side.

It was impossible for her to remain inconspicuous.

Just then, her cheeks felt hotter than the water evidently was.

She dropped her gaze to her feet, which only triggered fresh concern from her companion.

Diana gently squeezed her shoulder. "Lara, are you well? I am sorry. Is this too much?"

_You could say that._

Lara forced a smile as she looked up into wide, worried eyes. "I'm alright."

"This environment is not too strange for you?"

"It reminds me of boarding school. Just with… more togas."

_And the same old neuroses._

She was slowly gathering up the shards of her damaged psyche, but this setting was a whole other strain on her sanity. Another waking nightmare.

Because Lara Croft had never been much of a team player – going all the way back to her school days. One of the reasons for that was avoiding a crowded change room of half-naked, adrenalin-spiked girls.

Diana cocked her head. "The pools here have curative properties. I had hoped they would help you heal and relax. Yet you seem to be suffering some discomfort."

"Heh." Lara's cheeks reddened. "I'm British, Diana. My body shame runs deep."

The princess stiffened. "Why should you be ashamed? We are all of us beautiful. There is nothing more perfect than the female form. The Muses are all women after all."

With that, Diana unclasped her tunic, and swiftly unbound the linen strophium and subligaculum she wore as underwear.

_Oh. My. God._

Lara gaped. And then frantically tried to look anywhere but the nubile young woman before her.

If she bolted, would the guards consider it an escape attempt?

Diana seemed amused by her companion's panic. She grinned, "That is permitted here, you know."

Somehow the archaeologist hadn't managed to swallow her tongue. "What?"

"Romantic love between women."

Lara's mouth dropped open.

"Mother has said that in your world artificial categories have been constructed for who you are allowed to love; what is permitted and what is not. That is not the case in Themyscira."

"What? I never – "

"You are aroused, Lara Croft." She said it so matter of factly. "Accelerated heartrate and breathing. Tensed muscles. Flushed skin. Your body betrays you."

"I had a head trauma!"

"Of course," Diana chuckled. She backed away from the archaeologist, straight into the water. As she sank down, she called, "Join me. I promise you will feel better."

Lara watched the princess arch back happily in the pool before turning to greet her nearest countrywomen.

Tentatively, the archaeologist reached for the hem of her shirt. She considered bathing in her knickers and bra, but given how it would make her stand out further, that plan was quickly dismissed. It joined her other recent scheme – just as misguided – to take Diana hostage when they were alone together.

Lara gritted her teeth and began lifting her top.

She could feel eyes on her. She knew none of the Amazons would flat-out stare, but they were curious. It was understandable that would manifest in glances when her attention was elsewhere. Over the years, she'd been in enough situations where she was the peculiar foreigner – trailed by murmuring crowds; covertly photographed on occasion; having her ponytail tugged by the most daring of local children.

With her shirt off, she struggled with her bra and aching ribs. Not to mention her insecurities.

_Come on, Croft. You can leap away from a mountain face but you're afraid of a little communal bathing – a tradition shared by many cultures for centuries. Get over your deeply ingrained Anglican squeamishness._

"Lara, do you need help?" Diana asked.

"No!"

She hadn't meant to bark it, but the thought of the royal's hands undoing her cargo's reminded Lara a little too much of something else. And she didn't want to feel more hot and bothered than she already was.

She turned from the springs to remove her trousers and found the guards scrutinising her.

"Where exactly do you expect me to be hiding a weapon?" she grumbled. "Worse than bloody American airport security."

The women didn't apologise but at least they diverted their gaze while she finished undressing.

Nude, Lara stepped into the water and immediately sank down so she was submerged up to her shoulders.

The sensation triggered a reflex moan.

Diana was at her side once more; her expression as sunny as ever. "I knew you would like it."

"It – it's good." It was like lounging in a hot bath – a luxury she had pretty much forgotten since she embarked on her quest for answers. Hers was a life of icy river dips, hiking through downpours and battling the bipolar water heater in her flat shower.

She let her eyelids close while the tension dissipated from her body.

She opened them again when she heard Diana lightly splash the water with her palm.

The princess glanced around before murmuring, "I hope you do not mind? I have so many questions."

"I would be surprised if you didn't."

From the instant they had met, it was obvious that Diana was curious about Lara and her world. She radiated excitement like a little girl on Christmas Eve.

Lara waved her hand. "Fire away."

Diana mouthed the same words as she absorbed the foreign expression. Then she added, "Is it true your country has a queen as well?"

"Yes."

"Is she a great warrior?"

"Being an old battle-axe count?"

Diana blinked. "Does that mean she is a seasoned fighter?"

Lara burst out laughing. Of course the joke would be lost on her companion. Still grinning, she turned to face the young woman. "Diana, you're – "

The way the princess was looking at her – with complete sincerity – Lara couldn't relish any enjoyment at the expense of her naiveté. The archaeologist sighed, "You're lovely."

_And far too good for the world outside Themyscira._

Lara's comment was kindling for Diana's cheeriness. The girl replied, "As are you, Lara."

There was that naiveté again.

The less time the Englishwoman spent considering herself, and her blood-splattered history, the better. That's where her own curiosity came in.

"My turn for questions now." She pointed at Diana's wrists. "You never take those off?"

The Amazon raised an arm, and appraised the bracelet clasped around it.

"Very, very rarely. These are constant reminders of what we once were, when we mistakenly lowered our guard and trusted men as we trust one another. We became slaves. Man's chattel." As she spoke, her expression hardened, and Lara glimpsed warrior's steel behind the warm and softness of lamb's wool.

The archaeologist dared a question to test one of her theories. "You were one of these slaves?"

"No, it was long before I came into being. But my mother and most of the others were there."

Lara exhaled, "More immortals. Of course." She never seemed capable of escaping those deathless buggers.

Diana shook her head. "We are ageless, not immortal, Lara. Back then, as Man's Civilisation was starting to ascend, our Nation was neither. Many of us died in the battle for liberation. And many more of our sister factions never escaped subjugation, or succumbed to infighting and tragedy…"

Lara knew all about that – those ragged women she had encountered in Macedonia, keening and pawing ineffectually in the dark for all eternity.

For a heartbeat she saw them fresh as her brain excavated the vision. It took several blinks before the forms gratefully receded once more.

Diana at least hadn't noticed her companion's distraction. The young woman continued, "It was only by calling out to the Sacred Five Goddesses, and receiving their aid that we were able to cast down our oppressors and claim our freedom.

"So in commemoration of the cost to our people, and as symbols of how far we have come, we wear these – instruments of subjugation repurposed as weapons. We cannot forget, and we cannot go back. "

"I could say the same of my scars."

"Your scars?" Diana blinked.

Lara understood the princess's confusion. Apart from her injuries gained on Themyscira, the archaeologist's skin was blemish-free.

"They're there," Lara smiled sadly. "You can't see them anymore, not really, but they will always be there, etched onto my bones. Let's just say I made a transformative journey similar to that of your people. …Unwillingly."

"Alone?"

"Yes." _Was there any other way?_

Diana swallowed, "What about your loved ones?"

"Friends and family you mean?"

The princess nodded. "There must be people who care about you?"

"Oh, there are."

Or were.

* * *

Lara recalled that day on the deck of the Endurance. Sam was insistent on getting an expedition group shot for her documentary. When they finally clustered together, the fledging archaeologist experienced a moment of clarity.

The weather was perfect; the deck motionless under their feet.

The only thing brighter than the sun and sky was their smiles.

Roth had his hand on her shoulder, and Sam's arm circled her waist. Jonah was busy mussing Alex's hair, while both Reyes and Grim grumbled cross-armed about getting back to work.

This was it. This was what her life was going to be from that point onward.

Finally.

She had her place. Her people. Her home.

* * *

Melancholy passed through her like a wave. When the sensation mostly faded, she found that the current had deposited her back in the pools of Themyscira.

She cleared her throat, hoping that the action might blast away the lingering grief.

"I find it better to work alone, Diana, as much as possible. It – it's safer."

For everyone she still cared about. Far less risk of them being held hostage and hurt. Because of her.

"What about your parents?" Diana pressed.

"I lost my mother and father when I was a child."

The Amazon gasped, "That is _horrible_."

Lara had lived with the tragedy for so long that she'd forgotten the strength of others' reaction on hearing about it for the first time. She shrugged, "That's life, Princess, outside of Paradise."

"Lara – " Tears welled in Diana's eyes.

"It's alright. I came to terms with – "

The archaeologist was tugged upright into a hug.

Diana clung to her; her arms tight around Lara's shoulders. "We are your family now."

The Englishwoman froze.

She wasn't used to embraces anymore. Well, outside of close combat clinches.

She'd forgotten the correct response to such physical affection.

Tentatively she reached up and around, and cupped Diana's shoulder blades.

The touch sparked a wide-eyed realisation.

She was standing with her naked body pressed flush against the equally nude Amazon princess. Their slick fronts squashed together.

And given their height difference, Lara's chin sat perilously close to Diana's cleavage.

The Englishwoman's cheeks blazed. Then her pupils darted around the hot springs.

Other Amazons were watching.

_It was too much._

Suddenly she could smell Sam's body lotion.

_Way too much._

"Di – Diana," Lara stammered into her companion's collar bone. "I – I nee – "

She needed to detach; achieve some distance while her overclocked brain was allowed to focus on the task of compartmentalising reality, memory and fantasy.

"Daughter."

Those two syllables, spoken behind her, were like being doused in a bucket of ice water.

Evidently they had the same effect on Diana.

The princess immediately broke from the embrace.

There was no embarrassment from her, however. While Lara readied to dive deep and test her breath-holding limits, Diana made no effort to cover herself. Her arms remained at her sides; her head raised.

It was mostly a show of confidence though. Lara was close enough to recognise a quiver in the princess's throat, beneath her firm-set jaw.

Reluctant to turn fully – mortified at being caught bare-arsed in a compromising position with the heir to the Queendom – the archaeologist instead tracked Diana's gaze over her shoulder.

Ornately robed as she had been in the arena, the Amazon queen stood flanked by Lara's guard, and an additional four warriors. Her expression mirrored her daughter's exactly. Minus any unsteadiness.

Lara's anxiety was a wasted expulsion of energy. The queen ignored her.

Instead, the royal muttered, "Diana, a word, please."


	6. Chapter 6

No sooner had the queen's guard closed the doors to the royal chambers, than Hippolyta started.

She turned to her daughter, and frowned, "Diana, whatever you are doing with Lara Croft, it needs to end. She is no pet."

" _Whatever I am doing_?" the princess blinked. "Is it not obvious? I am trying to help her; heal her; introduce her to the island that is now her home."

Hippolyta's frown deepened. "I know you mean well, but – "

"It is only in accordance with your ruling."

The queen's jaw clenched at the unaccustomed interruption.

Diana knew it was unwise, but as with a spear she thrust a fresh point forward. "Mother, she is a mortal woman. What can she do to us?"

"Much."

The princess parted her lips to disagree but Hippolyta interjected, "You have received a warrior's training?"

"Of course."

"Then you should know to _never_ underestimate your opponent. Do not be lulled into complacency by apparent lack of strength or size or skill. Rats, carrying fleas, brought Plague to Europe and decimated half the Continent's population."

Diana chuckled, "You are truly of the opinion that Lara is so dangerous?"

Hippolyta grimaced, "Lara Croft is not evil, but there is a great darkness within her. She has experienced such pain, done terrible things. Her soul is stained with blood."

"Like you, Mother."

Diana immediately regretted her outburst. She had crossed the line into insubordination. She dropped her head in meek apology, but not before daring a glance at her mother.

The princess could not imagine Medusa's glare to be stonier.

A reprimand had to be imminent.

But after several moments of quiet, all Diana heard was a murmured, "Yes."

Startled, the young Amazon looked up.

Hippolyta's manner remained bristly – spiked like a cornered porcupine – yet she had managed to smother her temper for the most part.

The queen swallowed, and repeated, "Yes. I do not deny it."

She paused then, providing an opportunity for her daughter to interject a second time.

A test of sincerity.

When the silence went unbroken – and the test was passed – Hippolyta continued.

"The difference is that I have a responsibility to our people. Everything I have done has been in their best interest. _Your_ best interest, Diana.

"Lara Croft destroys. She cares for no one but herself. And even in that regard, she is reckless. Self-preservation means little to her. As for morality, her obsession has led her to back alleys and shadows. She behaves like a thief, aligns herself with human vermin if it will secure her objective. She has pulled many into blackness after her; with fatal consequences. _Never_ for her, let it be noted."

Diana risked a response. "You saw a great deal when you used the Lasso."

"Yes," Hippolyta nodded. "Regrettably I did."

"Why did you scream?"

That was the golden question. Diana had been trying to ask it since the arena interrogation, only to find that her mother was avoiding her. Even on her busiest days, it was Hippolyta's custom to eat at least one meal of the day with her daughter and Philippus. However, since Lara's arrival, the queen had become a recluse. She always retreated when grappling with a particularly large issue.

Diana's preference was to talk – to discuss and gather opinions on a problem – so she pushed harder on Hippolyta's wall of reticence.

"What did you see, Mother?"

The Amazon queen's head dipped as she exhaled, "The Grey-eyed Goddess."

"What?!" Diana gasped. "How is that possible?"

Hippolyta's eyes lifted, and latched onto her daughter's stunned expression. "Lara Croft has been touched by Athena. I do not understand it, but it is so. As I advanced deeper into her mind, the goddess appeared. Angered, she expelled me."

Diana clapped her hands together. "But this is wonderful."

It was Hippolyta's turn to stare. Her brow crumpled even as her daughter's smile broadened.

"Don't you see, Mother? Lara is special."

She knew it. She had known it from the instant their eyes met in the forest. The spirited, scratched-up mortal was going to change everything.

The Amazon ruler looked unconvinced.

Diana seized her mother's shoulders in her eagerness. "Lara has Athena's blessing. Her patronage. How many have ever borne that honour? A dozen heroes? Half of that, more like? And all of them millennia ago."

Hippolyta hooked her fingers under Diana's right hand, and extracted herself from the grip.

"Daughter – "

"Lara was allowed safe passage here for a reason. I am sure of it. No one arrives in Themyscira by accident."

"Diana, listen to me."

Hippolyta cupped her child's cheek. It was an old placatory gesture that the princess knew well. The number of times in childhood when her mother would soothe tears and temper in the same manner. With identical blue irises locked, and Hippolyta's voice lowered to an evenly paced murmur, the effect was hypnotic.

Narcissus and his reflection, benignly reimagined.

Diana's mother spoke softly; rationally. "Lara Croft is no Amazon. She brings disobedience, and dissatisfaction with our way of life. Already I see she has infected you – and that attitude is unwelcome here."

Diana twisted her face free. Disappointed, she muttered into her chest bone, "So what is it you propose to do?"

"First, I want you to keep your distance."

"You will instruct our sisters to do the same?"

Hippolyta nodded. "As a safeguard, yes."

"You would doom Lara to being an outsider forever, despite the anguish inherent to that? Her life has been so sad."

"I know," Hippolyta sighed. "I do not relish this course of action."

"You say Lara cannot leave, that she is one of us, and yet you will isolate her. That is cruel, Mother. And the Amazons are not cruel."

The comment evidently jabbed a nerve.

Hippolyta's voice rose, icy and sharp, like a gale blowing off a glacier.

"I will not let her taint our home; everything that we have fought and sacrificed for. I refuse to let her destroy it, as is the case with all she touches."

"You are – "

Hippolyta raised her hand.

It was an action she reserved for assemblies. And an indicator that Diana was no longer talking to her mother – the woman who had given her life. She faced her queen.

Hippolyta's regal manner seeped into her words.

"You may treat Lara Croft like a project as much as you like, Diana, but she will _never_ be one of us. She does not know how to submit; to yield even slightly. It is outside her nature. She cannot trust that others have her best interests at heart, if only she will obey a higher authority."

"It is understandable. She has been betrayed, Mother. Repeatedly."

"It may be so, but she must learn on Themyscira. If she does not, there will be consequences for her. Grave ones. We have strict laws, which we must all obey to protect our existence. Even I cannot disregard them."

As Diana started to shake her head, her mother clasped her forearm.

"You may treat my words with scepticism, but it is only a matter of time before Lara crosses a line. Deep down, you know this."

Just then, the princess could see the little brunette as she had been in the arena: feral with desperation, lunging and lashing out at her captors.

_What wouldn't she do to survive? To get what she wanted?_

Hippolyta persisted with her cool reasoning. "One day you will rule, and realise that I do not make these decisions lightly. Ours is the warrior's way, and that means frequent sacrifice, of body… and soul. However difficult it may be, we must adopt the course of action that will most benefit those we are responsible for. Everyone. We cannot let our feelings, our _affections_ , become an obstacle to the greater good."

Another glimpse of Lara, hurt as she was, squeezing out a smile at the pools.

" _Diana, you're lovely," she said, with eyes that always looked slightly sad._

Hippolyta may have gazed into her soul, but she did not truly know the archaeologist. Diana was certain.

Despite her claim, and accompanying pained expression, it was not a difficult decision as the queen saw it: one mortal woman with the toxin of Man's World in her veins, or what was left of the mighty Amazon Nation.

"May I go now?" Diana asked, careful to layer the question with as much politeness as possible.

Despite the precautions, the queen's eyes still narrowed.

"Yes," she muttered.

Diana bowed her head in deference before turning to the door.

"Daughter."

The princess glanced back over her shoulder.

Hippolyta growled, "Do not get attached. You will be hurt by the outcome."


	7. Chapter 7

It was getting easier.

The edge separating hallucination and reality had begun to sharpen. Far less frequently did she find herself shin-deep in a vision like she had misplaced her footing on a riverbank and slipped from rock into sludge.

That day she had only stumbled once. It had been a doozy though – rolling over in bed to find Sam fast asleep next to her. Lara knew it was a waking dream, but it didn't stop her heart from revving. It only got worse when Sam's eyelids lifted and she gave the archaeologist one of her lazy smiles.

Despite knowing her companion's presence was a side effect of her whiplashed brain, Lara still found herself reaching out. One blink later she was groping at empty space and cursing herself.

So, completely out of character, she had been following the Amazon princess's advice.

Taking it easy.

Not that she had seen Diana since the hot springs incident – almost two days previously.

That was troubling.

The archaeologist had even gone so far as to ask her shadow guard if Diana was in trouble because of her. Aella, the senior of the two warriors, had responded tersely that the princess was well, terminating the exchange.

That was typical of all Lara's interactions with the Amazons so far. As explained to her, she enjoyed freedom to wander anywhere she wanted. However, the cold shoulder she received from the island's inhabitants acted like a series of portcullises to her explorations.

They routinely directed her back to her room.

They also made her miss Diana even more.

Lara was sexually attracted to the young woman on some level – she could admit that – but it wasn't the primary form of her response. Not even close.

Lara had learned to trust her instincts, and from the instant the women met, those instincts had been insisting Diana was… unique.

If the other Amazons were ice, Diana was the warmth of sunlight on a Summer afternoon. She was compassion and trust and hope – all those qualities that had bled out from Lara over the years.

Despite her distrust and world-weariness, the archaeologist was drawn to the princess. She tried to rationalise it as a yearning to fill the void of positivity within her. However, what it mostly felt like was a stupid teenage crush. Puppy love. If she had a tail, it would be thrumming every time Diana entered the room.

Lara pressed her palm over her mouth and groaned.

_Grow up, Croft. You have more pressing matters than a sweet-hearted warrior princess._

Like getting off the Amazons' homeland.

It certainly wouldn't be her first time trying to sneak off a long-lost island of legend. But there was a big difference between thwarting a group of desperate madmen and brain-addled demons, and trying to outsmart a highly regimented fighting force of superwomen.

So far Lara had localised her scouting to the Amazons' chief settlement to allay suspicion. That hadn't exactly been successful. She now knew where their armoury was, but that was about it. The Amazons were so isolationist they evidently didn't even have a watercraft robust enough to venture further than one nautical mile from the coast.

There also wasn't any sign of Lara's boat. She had the sickening feeling that hiding it wouldn't have been enough for her captors. Destruction seemed far more likely.

On top of it all, Lara's scowling and snooping bought further distrust. Her meals continued to be served without a knife.

Honeyed oat cakes and fruit for breakfast.

A meze platter for lunch.

Stew and crusty bread for dinner.

Every dish was excellent, but none could mask the bitterness of her thinly veiled imprisonment. Frustrated, unable to suppress her snark, Lara had arched an eyebrow when her stew was served the prior evening.

"I'm gluten intolerant."

Aella simply blinked at her.

* * *

For over an hour since her midday meal, Lara had been lying on her bed, sipping watered-down wine and staring at the ceiling. All the while she could feel restlessness building in her limbs.

She was embedded in a perfectly preserved, fully functioning matriarchy. One that dated back to Antiquity. It was the living, breathing stuff of legend. What wasn't there to be excited about?

Yet all she felt was profound exasperation.

The Amazons didn't seem to be particularly cerebral. There weren't even any books or scrolls in her chamber to distract her from the small electric jolts of irritation that passed through her muscles.

Passivity was the worst kind of torment for Lara Croft. Chinese water torture couldn't have been be more maddening.

She needed to stretch; feel the sunlight; do _something_.

"Enough!"

She swung her legs over the side of the mattress, grimaced as the movement strained the intercostal tissue around her damaged ribs, and stood.

On the other side of her door, her guard was waiting of course.

The sight tipped Lara over the edge.

"Don't you ever take a loo break?" she snapped.

Immediately she regretted it. She struggled with impatience and anger – she always had – but she tried to treat people with decency. Rudeness was unproductive. However, frustration had been sawing through her temper for the past few days.

A few frayed strands of control remained, at least, so she muttered "sorry" before shouldering past the pair.

* * *

Lara had hoped the tranquillity of the palace gardens would sand away her annoyance. It wasn't working. She paced back and forth a few times to flush the stiffness from her joints and tendons.

Yet there was nothing else for her to do.

She had never been one to stop and smell the hyacinths.

The courtyard was ringed with a cloister, and she wandered over to its open eastern side. Beyond, dropping off from the palace on its acropolis, lay the Amazonian city.

Lara balled her fists and brought them down on the stone railing.

She glared at Paradise.

_How the hell are you going to get out of this one, Croft?_

A voice behind her.

"Hola!"

The archaeologist turned.

"Diana?"

The princess was striding towards her, with a big smile, and a bag strung across her body.

There went the tail thrumming again. As Lara was wrapped in a hug, she chuckled, "I honestly didn't think I'd see you again."

Diana broke from the embrace. "My mother does not want me talking with you, it is true."

"Yet here you are."

"I have difficulty obeying a command when I believe it is wrong."

"You and me both, Princess." Lara added, "Will you not get into trouble for talking to me?"

"Far less than the trouble you will be in if you attempt to leave."

Lara swallowed. "Are my intentions that obvious?"

"It is not that." Diana grimaced. "My mother expects you to rebel. She is… encouraging it, ordering our people to isolate you. She hopes that in frustration you will do something foolish and break our laws. Then she will be entitled to imprison you."

Lara exhaled heavily. A lot more made sense now. The Amazon queen – with all her rummaging around in the archaeologist's mind – wasn't far off the mark.

Lara cocked her head. "Should you be telling me this?"

"I am ashamed of such pretence – baiting you like a wild animal into a wire snare. It is manipulative and malicious."

"Well, after several years locked up in a snooty all-girls boarding school, I think I can handle some Mean Girls."

Diana reached for her bag. "I have brought you something. As an apology."

She lifted the satchel's flap, and reached inside. "I cannot return your weapons, I hope you understand. And Althea would like more time to study the technology you brought. But this I can give back to you."

Lara's journal, still in its Ziplock pouch.

"Hah!" Lara grabbed for the package and hugged it to her chest. "Thank you, Diana."

Apart from the clothing stacked in the kist at the end of her bed, it was the first of her possessions to be returned.

The Englishwoman extracted the book from the bag, savouring the smell of its leather cover; the sensation of it against her fingertips.

The princess perched herself on the balustrade. "You document your work in that?"

"Yes, but it's more than that. This is – " Lara paused, realising how sad her words sounded. "It's my life. Everything."

She seated herself opposite the princess; then opened the journal. She used her thumb to flick through it. Dozens of pages of her scrawl, complimented with terrible pencil drawings, post-it notes, clippings and other material she had pasted alongside her theories.

There was something else too. Taped near the back.

It wasn't like her to share anything about her personal life. But Diana's warmth, and a few days of pseudo-solitary confinement, had a way of lowering the archaeologist's defences.

"You asked about my family the other day," Lara murmured. "This – this is my family. Was."

She tugged free an envelope secured to one of the final blank pages. Inside were four photographs. She presented them in turn to Diana

The first: the happiest Christmas of Lara's childhood. She was maybe four or five, bundled up in her winter woollies and sandwiched between her parents in the snow. The Manor dominated the background, while you could make out three tiny snow pyramids and a misshapen sphinx to the right of the family. Lara had been so proud of her building efforts, she remembered.

All three Crofts grinned at the camera.

Diana ran a fingertip over the surface of the photo. "I can see both of them in you," she smiled.

The second image was of the SS Endurance crew.

"After I lost my parents, this became my family. For a while anyway."

"Is that Sam?" Diana pointed at Jonah.

Lara chortled. Then her laughter died. _How did the Amazon know that name?_

Diana didn't need to be prompted for an explanation.

"Sam. You called the name before, when you were ill. Who is he?"

" _She_."

There was no surprise there. No judgement.

Lara returned her gaze to the photo. She jabbed at the cheerful Japanese-American girl alongside her. "This is Sam. Samantha. We met at university; rather surprisingly became best friends."

She presented the third picture. "This is the two of us on the day we graduated. God, we got so plastered that evening."

The archaeologist's smile receded as she held out the final image. She cleared her throat. "And this is Sam her with her fiancé. The photo is actually a wedding invitation."

Diana's expression matched her own. "Sam is the most important person in your life?"

"Of who is left, yes."

"She is unaware of how deep your feelings run?"

Of course Diana would see through the screen of words, straight to the truth.

Lara couldn't be bothered to manufacture a denial. She sighed, "It's… complicated. To reach the point where we are now, sacrifices were made. It's better this way."

"You do not sound like you believe it."

Lara shrugged, "Some days I don't. Some days I do. For the longest time I thought I had lost her, and with it, myself. But I have her back in my life now. As a friend. She's healthy and happy. And, most importantly, safe. That's worth everything."

"Is not your absolute happiness worth more?"

"Something I realised a long time ago, Princess, is that I'll never know the happiness of a normal life. Or not for long anyway. I draw contentment from my work; my _purpose_."

Before Diana could interrupt, Lara bolted another sentence onto her explanation as a reinforcing strut. "Besides, the situation with Sam and myself, it's completely irrelevant if I'm stuck here."

"I am sorry," the Amazon frowned. "I had hoped to help matters, and I have only upset you."

Lara waved her hand. "Don't worry about it, Diana. I'm grateful, for everything."

"How are you feeling?"

"Better every day. Tis but a scratch." Even without the princess around, she had returned to the pools – trying to time it for when the least women would be present to ogle her. She was a naturally fast healer, but the mineral-rich water of the springs seemed to be quickening her recovery.

"Good," Diana replied. "I have brought you something else as well." She turned over her shoulder and called, "Luella, please!"

Immediately, an ash blonde scurried across the courtyard with a tray in her hands.

Lara's melancholy melted away like dawn mist meeting the sunlight as she recognised what the Amazon held.

Luella placed the platter on the railing, received a hand squeeze from her princess in gratitude, and withdrew.

Diana explained, "I had this set up in what I believe is the custom of your people."

Two cups, milk jug, tub of honey, pot of hot water, spoons and a carton of Twinings Earl Grey.

_Thank Christ. A decent cup of tea._

While Lara grinned in delight, Diana added, "I found the tea in your supplies. And I believe this goes with it?"

From her satchel, the princess withdrew a familiar blue and orange box.

Jaffa Cakes.

"Diana…," Lara swallowed. "Will you marry me?"

The Amazon princess laughed. "Our courtship traditions are evidently a lot more intricate than those in Man's World."

She handed the sweet treat to her companion, who immediately set about preparing tea for the both of them.

Lara noted how Diana scrutinised the ritual. It was clear she was a voracious and naturally enthusiastic learner. She even mimicked how the Englishwoman stirred her drink, before taking a sip.

The Early Grey seemed to go down well. The Jaffa Cake, not so much.

Immediately after Diana took a bite, she jerked the chocolate-coated sponge away from her lips. "Ugh."

Lara snickered. Years prior, Sam had had the exact same reaction.

"I guess you're not the perfect woman after all," the archaeologist winked.

A few mouthfuls of tea later, Diana murmured into her cup, "I have been thinking; attempting to find a solution to your situation." She looked up. "Why did you come here, Lara?"

"As I was _compelled_ to say back in the arena, answers. To find the truth behind the myth."

"You intended to do that by hiding and spying on us?"

"I'm not proud of it, but yes. That's normally how it works."

"Must it?"

"I've found that the world's greatest secrets stay that way because of an unwillingness to share them. They come with gatekeepers. Typically deadly ones. Keeping a low profile is how I stay alive."

"So is this not better? Living among us instead of hiding in the shadows with your notebook. Freedom to observe us, and access our knowledge."

Lara scowled as she recalled the past few days. "Exploration is considerably less appealing when it's constantly policed. I'm a prisoner here, Princess."

"That is true. I have yet to solve that part of the equation. However, I believe I can improve things for you; make your life here more content."

_There was the Amazon's naiveté again._

As much as she felt affection for the young woman, Lara could feel her scepticism overpowering the emotion. She winced.

"Diana…"

"I would like to take you on a tour; instruct you in our ways."

"I thought your mother was dead set against any kind of interaction with me."

There was the glint of steel resolve again. It shone in Diana's posture; the sudden sharpness of her voice.

"We are all sisters here, yet sisters do not always get along. You may not believe it given the way you have been treated thus far, but there are those very curious to meet you and hear about your world. If there must be some disobedience in regards to my mother's wishes, then so be it."

That didn't sound like a particularly good idea to the archaeologist caught between the two factions.

But before she could protest, Diana stood.

"Come with me now, Lara Croft."

Well, there was nothing else to do. Lara slapped her thighs and got to her feet.

"Yes, Ma'am."

* * *

The archaeologist's shadow guard and all the expected stares followed the two women as they strode from the palace. Whereas Lara had only ventured straight down into the heart of the settlement before, at the base of the acropolis, Diana veered left. Almost immediately, the paved path began to climb again.

"Where are you taking me?" Lara asked the young royal alongside her.

"Someplace I believe you will appreciate."

As they edged around the rocky outcropping, a series of buildings came into sight, jutting out of a second mountainside.

Drawing nearer, Lara began to distinguish certain structures: an observatory dome; a small open air theatre in the Greek style.

She turned to Diana for enlightenment, but the princess simply gave her companion an enigmatic smile.

Eventually they reached a plaza that opened out before the grandest of the buildings. The edifice towered above them four or five storeys.

Lara stopped dead. "My God."

While the ground level was fronted with Doric columns, the upper bands each alternated pillars and three caryatids, totalling nine female figures across the building's facade.

Each of the women was sculpted holding a different item – an emblem cast in gold.

A lyre, writing tablet, scroll, cithara, comedic mask, its tragic twin, aulos, veil, globe and compass…

The Muses.

The realisation struck Lara at the exact instant Diana spoke alongside her.

"This is our centre of learning. The Library of Themyscira."

Heart hammering, the archaeologist lurched towards the entrance.

"Lara?" Diana called after her.

The princess went ignored.

Hell, an army of centaurs galloping across the square would have been ignored in that instant.

Once at the portico, Lara could see further inside, right into the heart of the space. Ten-foot high shelves lined the walls or stood separate in neat rows. Each had been divided into dozens and dozens of diamond-shaped partitions. Every one contained a scroll.

There were hundreds of them. Thousands. Tens of thousands.

Lara clutched at a nearby pillar for support.

The action was completed blind. She couldn't tug her eyes from the scene before her in case it was another illusion. She needed to absorb every detail before she blinked, and it all vanished.

The atmosphere was as hushed and tranquil as any monastery or nunnery.

That wasn't a poor simile. Just as in those cloistered communities, worship was busy taking place.

A handful of robed women moved about the hall, or sat at desks. They were reading or writing – parchment and wax tablets in equal use.

Lara could see it all thanks to circular openings in the ceiling that allowed natural light to enter. Tripod-mounted mirrors caught and reflected illumination around the chamber.

Diana's cheerful voice at the archaeologist's side again. "What? No clever comment?"

"I – " Lara's tongue was still tangled in astonishment. "I've never seen – This – This is incredible."

"So there are some things that can make Lara Croft truly smile?"

Smile. Cry. Scream. Dance around like a giddy teenage girl before her first date.

Or so Lara imagined.

Even as a hormonally-jumbled adolescent, romance had left her unmoved. Knowledge though… Books.

Until that moment, Trinity College Library had been one of her favourite places in the world. But it couldn't compare to _this_.

Her overheated brain was busy hauling out every account she had ever read of the most celebrated knowledge repositories in the Ancient World.

Celsus. Ashurbanipal. Ugarit. The Imperial Library of Constantinople. Alexandria, of course.

How did they hold up to this place?

Diana seemed amused by the stunned reaction of her companion.

She chuckled, "Would you like to meet Sappho now?"

At that, Lara turned and gaped at the princess.

"Sappho? _The_ Sappho?!"


	8. Chapter 8

"You are a fine horsewoman, Lara," Diana remarked as she slowed her mount to a trot.

Seated on her own Andravida, alongside the princess, the archaeologist waved her hand dismissively. "My mother was the accomplished rider. I'm competent in the saddle; that's about it."

"We will make a full Amazon of you yet."

Lara laughed.

About that, Diana did actually worry. The Englishwoman had been living among them for almost a month without further incident. She seemed content now that she was so utterly absorbed in something – revealing the Library to her had been a success as a strategic move. However, complete assimilation into their world looked unlikely.

Lara's heart was unquestionably that of an Amazon, even if she did not believe it of herself.

Yet still she insisted in wearing her outsider's dress, despite a whole wardrobe of Amazonian fashion available to her. If that was challenging for her, then accepting bracelets of submission – the ultimate symbol of Amazon integration – would be impossible.

Diana frowned at the thought.

"Yes?" Lara cocked her head. She had caught her companion's mood shift.

Immediately, the princess redirected, like the most effective of blade defences.

"Are other women in your world like you, Lara?"

The archaeologist paused for a moment before answering. "I am… something of an exception to the rule. Or, at least, I've felt like that for a long time. An anomaly."

"Why is that, do you think?"

"It's easier to stick with what you know, I suppose. Work around the expectations. I didn't."

"What are the expectations? Marriage and children still? Even in your 21st Century?"

Lara sighed. "There is that, but it's more about having a prescribed path for our lives; what society insists is important for us. Markers of success. The Crofts have been known for their eccentricity for a few generations now, so nobody really expected the conventional family track of me. But I was going to do everything else: work hard at school, get my degree, build my career as a reputable archaeologist, publish papers…"

The corner of the Englishwoman's mouth twitched into a wry smile. "I had everything planned out. But life flung me from that path. All I could do was keep moving forward. Into the unknown." She shook her head, "That's never been easy but then again, the way our world is going, perhaps the less I have to do with its systems and expectations, the better."

"What do you mean?"

"Right now we seem intent on proving your mother right about us. We're slipping backwards. Into fear, hate and a dangerously malicious conservatism. Even in the so-called progressive nations. You think we'd have moved beyond that, having seen its effects a hundred times. But no. I know better than most how these things go, and I'd rather not be a part of it."

Diana straightened in her saddle. "Then it is time for us to emerge, and set things back on the right course."

"A few hundred warrior women suddenly popping up in Washington DC? Or London? Or anywhere else for that matter?" Lara's eyebrows climbed. "Oh, that would do it alright."

"We could make such a difference, if only my mother would let us," Diana muttered.

That was one of the things she enjoyed most about her time with Lara. She could say things in direct defiance of the queen's commands and there was no anxious put-down from her companion; no reflex rebuke.

Lara simply smiled at her. "If your mother ever permits you to leave here and explore my world, I would very much like to show you the ropes as it were. Plus, I think I can offer accommodation fit for royalty."

Still the talk of leaving. It worried Diana greatly.

* * *

She thought she had helped the archaeologist find her niche in Amazonian society. Apart from her tours of the island with the princess, Lara practically lived in the Library. She seemed happy. Certainly her health had been restored. Every day, she rose early and ascended to the centre of learning. Sunrise to sunset. On occasion, she had been known to fall asleep and pass the night there, with her head on one of the reading desks.

There was so much forgotten knowledge stored on Themyscira, she enthused to Diana. Histories of civilisations that Man's World knew about only in name. Complete, multi-volume works that existed outside the island as fragments alone. Every day the archaeologist wore an expression of dazed delight.

There was Lara's absorption of Amazon knowledge, but there was also her sharing of what she knew. It was not the scraps of information that Hippolyta filtered out following a session brooding over her Sphere. Lara gave freely and honestly.

The archaeologist had become a swift favourite of the scholars as a result.

Lara was trying to keep a low profile – the queen was known to be in a fury, refusing to talk to Diana because of her manoeuvring – but the little brunette was routinely pressed into giving talks.

Most were informal, but they rapidly outgrew the discussion chambers adjoining the library. In little time, the building's tiered auditorium filled every time Lara gave a lecture.

It was understandable to Diana. Her mother could insist otherwise, that everyone was happy with their frozen existence, but many of the Amazons were deeply curious about life _Outside_. There had been a handful of late arrivals to Themyscira over the years – Sappho was one of the more celebrated – but it had been centuries since the last refugee of Man's World washed ashore. Lara's information was current.

The faces in attendance at the talks changed according to the subject. Diana attended all of them. The discussion on military weaponry was especially popular. Artemis lurked in the back of the auditorium, feigning disinterest, while even Althea was tempted away from her laboratory.

The Amazonian scientist had raised her hand and asked about her favourite subject.

"In your world there are… airplanes; flying vehicles that can deliver destruction unseen from a great distance. Is this true?"

Lara uncrossed and recrossed her arms as she leaned against the front of the podium. "Yes, although these days drones seem to have mostly taken over that function."

She pre-empted Althea's next question with further explanation. "Drones are aircraft without pilots; usually controlled remotely. They…" she ran her tongue over her bottom lip as she hunted for words that would make sense to her audience. "They're used for scouting or combat, depending on how they're equipped."

Unease rippled through the lecture hall, travelling in a low hum.

The Amazons knew that technological advance was a conduit for conflict in Man's World. Weaponry created by scientists and engineers enabled Ares' disciples to nourish him with ever greater quantities of blood and brutality.

It was one of the reasons Hippolyta kept her Sisters apart. However righteous the cause, she would not sacrifice the precious remainder of her people when outside Themyscira they would be facing heavily armed foes as false as Herakles and his band millennia previously.

Such dishonour in the Modern Era of Warfare.

To murder hundreds, if not thousands, of people by simply pushing a button a continent away.

A true, blooded warrior understood that killing should never be easy. That was fundamentally wrong. You needed to look into the eyes of your opponent as you ended their life; taking that culpability onto your soul like a scale of lead. Even as you built up an uncomfortable, armoured vest one fragment at a time, it ensured you could never forget. As was right.

* * *

Diana looked over at the Englishwoman. How many scales did she wear? Probably more than many of the Amazons.

"Lara?"

The brunette turned to her. She may have seen and done dark things, but right then she was evidently at peace. "Diana?" she grinned.

"Do you ever think about your purpose?"

A heavy topic, clearly. Lara's brow furrowed. But when the archaeologist spoke, Diana knew she would receive a frank answer.

"My purpose? Not so much. That came to me pretty easily." Lara puffed out her cheeks. "But _how_ that purpose has changed me; definitely. I struggled with that for a very long time. Even now, even though I feel I've come to terms with it, there are days I can't look in the mirror."

"I still believe that is better. Than not knowing." Diana sighed heavily. "I have spent so much time thinking about my purpose – _why_ I was allowed to come into being."

Of course the topic of her creation had emerged during their time together. A life born out of blood, sand, a mother's yearning and the generosity of the Five Goddesses.

It was little surprise that Lara did not believe the tale.

Even at that moment, she was shaking her head.

"I still think your mother is lying to you, Diana. Probably to protect you for some reason. You can't make a living being from dirt."

"Is that not a basic tenement of your faith?"

"Not mine. I – "

A rabbit bounded out from the brush into the cleared path ahead of them. It paused for a heartbeat, its head raised as it assessed the women on their mounts.

That was the last thing the creature ever did. A griffin slammed into it from above, hitting the ground so hard that the horses balked several paces away.

The rabbit had no time to resist, or even squeak. Claws tightened, wings beat, and the griffin was gone once more into the sky with its prey.

"I – " Lara's voice wavered. "I retract my statement about your birth."

The Englishwoman looked shaken in a way she had not since her binding with the Lasso. Perhaps it was time for a break?

Diana dismounted and removed a waterskin from her saddle bag. She took a few mouthfuls before handing it to Lara, who had followed the Amazon's lead and was busy stretching her legs.

Before she took a sip, the archaeologist chuckled, "Sorry. You think you'd get used to accepting the impossible. But it never happens. Every time is like the first."

While the Englishwoman drank, Diana continued her musings out loud.

"I think of your Creation stories. Adam, Eve and Lilith, the first of a new being, granted dominion over everything. Given the responsibility to care for your world. What if I am like them?"

"Stay away from serpents," Lara smirked. "Although I'm pretty sure that's what your mother thinks I am."

She handed the skin back to the princess.

Together the women began walking down the path. Their horses ambled behind, led by their reins.

"I love my life here," Diana exhaled. "My sisters, my mother. I know how blessed I am to dwell in Paradise; to have grown up cherished by my people, with so many gifts from the Goddesses. And yet, I feel wasted."

She could see her companion's lips parting in denial.

Diana cut her off with a question. "How old are you, Lara?"

"Twenty seven."

"And during those twenty seven years, you have done and seen so much."

Lara's expression hardened. "And lost so much. Please don't ever envy my life, Diana."

"But that is it exactly. You have lived. I am decades older than you. Centuries. But I am still treated like little more than a child. I _feel_ little more than a child."

"And you think that's because you are so protected here?"

Diana nodded. "I am different from you. I am different from the other Amazons. Nonetheless, I am never permitted to explore my full potential. I am not even allowed to participate in our festival games and contests."

"Why not?"

"Because of what I am." _An aberration_. "Mother believes it would be unfair to the others due to my… advantages."

Lara's chin dipped to her chest. "Alright, if you left, what would that mean for you? Here?"

"Exile. I would be forbidden to return."

The archaeologist lifted her head. "There you go. Grand adventures have a price. If there's one universal truth I've uncovered, it's that."

It was as if Diana had been slapped. Even her eyes watered. "You are exactly like my mother," she hissed at Lara. "You would dissuade me from wanting anything _more_ than my life here."

The princess had expected her companion to respond with fire matching her own. Yet Lara kept her temper dampened.

"No," she replied with a lowered voice, "I disagree with the queen's policies. Isolationism always leads to stagnation and weakness in the end. But – " she reached out and rested her hand on Diana's forearm, "– before you do anything, you, _you_ need to make peace with what it will cos– "

The princess shrugged away from the touch.

In that instant the women wore matching expressions of disappointment.

It stung doubly for Diana. She was disillusioned that Lara did not enthusiastically support her desires. But she was also saddened by her own reaction, and the hurt it caused the little brunette. It took much internal struggle for Lara to lower her guard, Diana knew. Yet she had effectively thrust the Englishwoman's weapon back in her face, and she loathed herself for it.

Silent, the archaeologist folded her fingers, and retracted her hand. She was retreating into herself; an icy reticence setting as a fresh shield.

Diana swallowed hard on the lump of guilt lodged in her gullet.

"Amazons understand cost," she murmured. "You have been learning our history?"

"Yes. Myrene has been helping me."

"Then you know Paradise has a price."

Lara nodded. "No children for one thing, when you live apart from men."

Diana would never forget the faces of so many women during her childhood. The delight that they had a little girl to communally mother. But also the anguish behind their smiles, flashing every so often in their eyes like fish testing a pool's surface. It was the anguish of lives lost, or denied entirely.

She winced, "My mother decided that the pain of longing was preferable to that of discarding boy infants that stemmed from our random _encounters_. That was our practice in the past, before we arrived here, but it nearly tore us apart."

Lara cocked her head, "That was long before your time."

"True. But there is more we must pay still, every day."

Their ambling had delivered them to that _more_.

Diana stopped. Several paces ahead of them, the earth dropped away sharply. It opened into a river-split gorge. On the other side of the chasm, a giant stone slab was embedded in the opposite cliff-face. A deliberate landslide had collapsed boulders and rubble before it, and dozens of chains in the same iron-grey as the rock were strung over its front.

Lara was far too observant to miss the slab, despite the camouflage. She gasped, "What is _that_?"

"One of the last remaining entrances to Tartarus. We call it Doom's Doorway."

The archaeologist's eyes shot wide. "You can reach the Underworld through it?"

"And its prisoners can reach us. Hence our responsibility to keep guard and prevent it from happening."

Diana pointed out the handful of Amazons stationed around the Door and on the plateau above it. A few were even patrolling the narrow wooden bridge that spanned the rift. All were specks in comparison to the slab.

"This is our burden; the price of our life here," the princess explained. "And our eternal punishment from the Goddesses for pursuing vengeance against Herakles and his men."

Lara remained fixated on the Door. She had paled again.

Diana prompted, "Are you afraid of the monsters within?"

"More like the human monsters I know too well," Lara replied. Her trance broken, she looked directly at her companion. "And what they'd do to get their hands on the power trapped inside."


	9. Chapter 9

Lara's legs buckled.

"Christ," she hissed as she staggered onto one knee.

Somehow she managed to keep her arm raised. But with every strike the Amazon delivered to the Englishwoman's shield, she could feel herself weakening. Each blow reverberated through the bronze and poplar structure, turning her muscles to jelly.

The aspis was too large and heavy for her. She knew it; she had complained to Artemis about it, but the commander ignored her.

Lara was among the Amazons, and she was expected to join them in battle if needed.

This compulsory exercise in the training yard was supposed to test her combat abilities. Mostly though, it seemed like an opportunity to laugh at her.

Although other women were sparring as well, a crowd had gathered behind Lara. She was sure she glimpsed an occasional smirk when she botched something. She was getting flashbacks to some of the more traumatic moments of her public school years, and she didn't like it. At all.

Her ego was taking as much of a pounding as her body, when all she wanted was to be back in the Library. She had found her place and her tribe there, as it were.

She just wanted this humiliation over w–

Bellowing, her opponent brought her blade down.

The instant Mala's xiphos connected with the shield, Lara's arm gave out. The wooden dome smacked into her forehead.

The pain was accompanied by a flash of red behind her eyelids.

Steel on flint.

She didn't resist the motion of the swipe. She let it drop her flat to the ground. With the shield still providing the protection of a tortoise shell, she rocked backwards. Then she kicked out, channelling the momentum into her legs.

Luck was on her side.

The Amazon, Mala, was at least a foot taller than Lara, with the reach to match. But she had lunged forward in her commitment to the strike. That put her nicely in range.

The heels of Lara's boots connected with Mala's bare shins.

There'd be no lasting damage but it was enough to send the warrior hopping backwards.

Thank God she hadn't been wearing greaves.

The counter gave Lara a few precious seconds, and inches of space, to stand.

She leapt to her feet, and almost fell over again with the weight of her weapons.

_This really wasn't going well._

"Croft Manor for a pistol and climbing axe," she muttered.

Frontal assault was not her choice of combat style at all. Especially not with blunted sword and shield as weapons. They were cumbersome, and even without the armour she'd refused, she felt dangerously slowed. She was at a huge disadvantage against cocky Mala, a statuesque blonde held in esteem as one of the greatest Amazonian champions.

And who, evidently, hated Lara more than Artemis for some reason.

To add to Lara's preoccupation, she knew that Diana and Myrene were both in the audience witnessing the spectacle.

Diana was standing next to Artemis, her face crumpled with concern. Since their outride to Doom's Doorway, the princess had retreated. It wasn't that they no longer met and conversed. It was more that Diana seemed to be holding a part of herself back. Cheerful frankness had evaporated from her questions and admissions.

Diana was avoiding more than simply the Englishwoman, but Lara was certain their conversation had played a major part in the princess's attitude change. She suspected Diana was miffed with her for not wholeheartedly supporting her adventurous ambitions outside Themyscira.

Lara missed her.

At least the archaeologist was starting to sift some other allies out of the volcanic gravel that made up the Amazons. She felt far more at home with the scholars of the Library – and Myrene in particular.

The soft-spoken librarian had essentially volunteered as Lara's research assistant and language teacher. While Diana exposed the archaeologist to the everyday of the Amazons, Myrene satisfied Lara's academic curiosity, helping her trawl through, and make sense of, the women's vast records.

As far as Lara was concerned, Myrene was…

Myrene was right there.

Lara and Mala's circling of one another had turned the archaeologist to face the crowd. Behind Lara's opponent, stood the librarian on the far right of the spectators. She stood out in so many ways: her smaller stature in comparison to her sisters, her darker skin, her pained expression in response to the violent show.

Her eyes met Lara's.

The Englishwoman didn't know what she expected. Perhaps a flash of cheerful recognition and reassurance. Instead, Myrene's face scrunched into a scowl.

One heartbeat later, Lara understood why.

Mala's sword swung in at the archaeologist's left thigh.

Lara thrust her blade out in a desperate block. Steel deflected.

The shock of impact skittered up the archaeologist's arm. She grimaced. _Too close._

Then she called out to Artemis, "Are we done yet? Haven't you seen enough for your assessment?"

"We continue until someone submits."

That was worth another grimace. _No bloody chance of that._

Artemis's declaration evidently acted as rocket propellant for Mala. Attack followed attack with a ferocity that forced Lara into pure defensiveness just to survive. Every time she attempted to strike out at Mala, she immediately had to snap her arm behind the protection of the shield.

She'd been put on the back foot, and she knew it.

"Shit."

It was only a matter of time before she made a fight-ending mistake.

Seconds, it turned out.

Mala's xiphos slipped vertically between the edge of Lara's shield and sword. Too late the archaeologist realised she hadn't fully drawn her own weapon behind cover.

The Amazon twisted her blade perpendicular.

The action forced the gap between shield and sword wider. At the same time it rotated Lara's wrist in the direction of her thumb.

The archaeologist couldn't resist the motion.

Her fingers loosened. And her sword went flying off to her right side.

She was disarmed.

Maybe a dozen heartbeats passed while she processed that realisation. The awful chill of anxiety ran from her crown downwards, like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her head.

She could hear her shallow, unsatisfying breathing. Her over-revved pulse. The murmurs from onlookers.

But also the gravelly voice that would always be with her.

_Keep moving, Croft._

Her movements were too slow – too obvious – but she obeyed the voice.

Gingerly she reached down with her free hand, keeping her eyes locked with Mala's the whole time.

The Amazon had stepped back, clearly expecting an immediate surrender once her opponent lost her weapon. The sight of Lara groping at the ground surprised her, but surprise quickly morphed into irritation as she was denied her expected victory.

To Lara it felt like she had stumbled into the den of a mountain lion. A bizarrely familiar situation. Her enemy was bristled; ready to lash out with sharp, unsheathed claws.

Timing would be everything.

The lion leapt first.

Lara's fist closed around a handful of dirt.

She flung it as she straightened.

It caught Mala mid-roar.

Spluttering and snarling, the Amazon rubbed at her face with her forearm.

While she was struggling, Lara grabbed the plumage of Mala's helmet and tugged the headpiece forward over her eyes.

A double blinding.

Hopefully it had bought the archaeologist sufficient seconds.

Lara knew how dangerous it was to expose her back to an enemy but she had no other choice. She sprinted across the training yard to her objective: a rack of weaponry.

She snatched up a recurve bow and a several arrows.

To do so, she had to drop her shield – another huge risk.

But that was the story of her life. And so far, her luck had held. Mostly.

She turned back to her opponent to find Mala surfaced out of sightlessness. Eyes streaming, she was furious; striding in Lara's direction.

The Englishwoman nocked an arrow and fired.

Mala caught it with her shield.

A second shot.

Neutralised the same way.

A third.

Blocked by wood and bronze.

"Come on," Lara murmured.

She had maybe one more draw and release before Mala reached her.

With the final arrow, the Amazon didn't even bother with her shield. Barely two feet from the Englishwoman, she raised her right bracelet to deflect the projectile.

As she did so, Lara dived forward.

She dipped under Mala's arm and popped up behind her.

Immediately, Lara dropped the bow stave over the Amazon's head. Once it had passed Mala's chin, Lara jerked the upper and lower limbs back towards herself.

Although most of her knowledge had been gained incidentally over the years, she'd ended up with a well-stocked repository of combat truths. One of the most useful learnings was that it didn't matter how big or strong your enemy is; while the neck is deceptively robust, the throat is always vulnerable.

Mala gurgled.

The height difference between the Amazon and Englishwoman helped. Lara arched back, abandoning her based stance. As she hung dead, all her weight shifted to Mala's trachea. The pressure on the blonde's throat had to be unbearable.

"Yield," Lara growled.

"Nnnnnngghhhhh."

The Amazon was still tensed, fighting though she had already discarded her sword.

Lara knew the choke was on. It was down to whose strength of mind and body would fail first.

She was well aware of her state in that regard. After such a prolonged, physically intense combat, already her arms were fatiguing.

"Yield!" she yelled.

Mala stumbled to her knees. Her palm came up to patter frantically on the stave.

Submission.

_Thank God._

Lara released her grip.

She was depleted, but even with the panting and muscle trembling to consume her consciousness, she could feel defiant pride welling within her.

It was childish, but right then she didn't care.

She turned her head towards Artemis and gave the blank-faced commander a small, satisfied shrug.

Lara was still relishing her underdog's victory when fingers clamped around the scruff of her neck.

Mala.

_Stupid, Lara. So bloody stupid._

The archaeologist was propelled forward over the Amazon, flipping entirely. She crashed onto her back. Winded.

Mala was on top of her instantly in a flurry of limbs.

Lara knew what she had to do in a grapple: take away her opponent's ability to strike and head butt. She needed to tug Mala in tight; shut down the fighting space between them.

But the blonde was so frustratingly strong and fast.

Lara just managed to block a punch with her forearm. That put her palm close to Mala's neck.

Control a person's head; control the direction of their body movement.

Lara was still reaching for her target when she realised Mala had drawn her free arm way back. Loading it.

Lara saw the Amazon's elbow swing in towards her temple.

Then nothing.


	10. Chapter 10

Given the circumstances, her effort was admirable.

"She's strong, Artemis," Diana murmured.

"Mmmm, but that is like deciding which tadpole is strongest in a lake."

The Amazons watched Mala drive Lara backwards with a series of straight thrusts and swipes. The Englishwoman was completely outmatched. She could only half-crouch behind her shield, using it to catch each blow. There was absolutely no room for her to strike back.

And she was clearly tiring. Her bare shoulders glistened with sweat as if she had been oiled.

Besides Diana, Artemis sighed heavily.

Her gaze did not leave the combat but she muttered to her companion, "Her technique is appalling. Sloppy, uncontrolled…"

Diana could not disagree.

Lara's sword flew from her hand and landed in the dirt of the training area. The brunette looked at it with obvious alarm. Her entire body had set rigid, like a doe on the brink of attempted escape.

Meanwhile, Mala appeared inordinately pleased with herself. That was one thing about the blonde: she had never mastered the art of masking her emotions. Such candour was to be appreciated most of the time. However, it also meant it was obvious when her pride and judgemental tendencies came to the fore. Which was too frequently.

The window to Mala's soul often revealed an internal ugliness in stark contrast to her external beauty.

In that moment, her posture and expression bellowed over-confidence. Her disarming of Lara had been effortless; as had the entire sparring session. Even before a verbal admission of defeat, she considered the victory hers.

To Artemis, the contest was over as well. She made a disinterested noise in the back of her throat.

Lara, meanwhile, had sunk down to the ground as if she were trying to retrieve her weapon by touch. Her eyes never left Mala's.

An instant later, the tension of the scene released like a lightning strike. Lara's action was about as unexpected too.

She sprang upright, flinging a handful of sand in her opponent's face.

Mala reeled backwards, but not before Lara bounded towards her, tugged the blonde's helmet over her eyes, and scurried across the arena.

Artemis frowned, "She fights like a rabid animal. A wounded wildcat."

Diana replied, "She fights to survive."

"That I am intimately aware of," Artemis grimaced. The action funnelled blood into her cheek, colouring the fresh scar that streaked her flesh.

The women looked on as Lara snatched up a bow and began firing at an advancing Mala. Even with all range lost, the brunette did not flinch. She was fascinating to watch – completely devoid of the capacity to surrender.

Within a few blinks, the entire fight had inverted. Mala arched back, gurgling and wide-eyed, as Lara choked her from behind with the bow stave.

In that instant, Diana's understanding came into eagle-eyed focus. Mala was a contest fighter. Lara was a combat fighter. Scrappy, opportunistic, her style was centred on being the one standing at battle's end. No matter what it took.

The princess was not alone in that realisation.

"She has no finesse," Artemis murmured. "That said, her improvisation is not bad."

The captain of the guard's face did not change, but Diana could detect an upward lift to her words. If it had been anyone but Artemis, that lilt would have transferred to her lips.

Lara was smiling enough for several women though. She had the victory.

Her elation did not dissipate but she relaxed her grip on the bow. Her shoulders drooped with exhaustion.

That instant, Mala grabbed her. The Englishwoman was slammed to the ground, and smothered in a frenzied grapple.

The Amazon onlookers gasped at the foul play. But before they could do anything to break apart the brawl, Mala smashed her elbow into the side of Lara's head.

The instant the strike connected, Diana knew something was wrong.

Lara went completely limp. The flex vanished from her limbs and she sprawled.

"Suffering Sappho!"

Diana dashed forward onto the arena.

Mala was still perched over the archaeologist, a feral glare blinding her. Her arm was drawn back to deliver a second blow in case Lara's lifeless state was a new subterfuge.

Diana shoved the blonde aside with a yell.

"What are you doing?! You could have killed her."

Mala righted herself at the same time she hissed, "She was the one who switched to lethal force with her arrows."

"The fight was _over_."

"I will _not_ apologise. She changed the rules."

Diana could feel her temper building. It bubbled dark and viscous deep within her. Before it could erupt, and she regretted anything she said or did, she shut Mala out from her consciousness. The princess dropped to her knees and focused on the injured mortal instead.

Lara had a strong pulse, but already the side of her head glowed coral pink. The rest of her face was a horrible pallid shade.

Diana drew the Englishwoman partially onto her lap, and cupped her cheeks.

"Lara? Lara?!"

There was no response.

The princess raised her head. She snapped, "By the Goddesses, Mala, how hard did you hit her?"

"It is not my fault how fragile she is!" the blonde snapped back.

A few other Amazons had run up. Some remained standing, looking on but providing space for Diana to provide her ministrations. Myrene, the librarian, knealt on the archaeologist's other side. She squeezed Lara's fingers.

"What shall we do, Princess?" Myrene asked.

No doubt one of their sisters had run off to find a senior healer. In the meantime, there was nothing to be done but try and reach Lara.

The irony was not lost on Diana that in unconsciousness the brunette seemed to be the most relaxed of them all. Circling her were faces lined with concern.

"Lara," Diana attempted again. "Lara, can you hear me?"

Nothing.

"Lara, it's Diana." She took the Englishwoman by the shoulders, and gently shook her. "Lara, please. Wake up."

Still nothing.

"Lara!"

The archaeologist's eyelids twitched; her pupils scurrying around behind the skin.

Her lips parted by a fraction. "Won… Wonderful," she slurred.

Diana exhaled her immense relief. Similar sounds echoed around her.

_Thank the Five!_

In the periphery of Diana's vision, she could see Mala stomping off. The blonde had at least stayed until Lara proved she was responsive, but the princess glared at the departing woman all the same.

Diana had always believed Mala was one of their greatest. In every way. But as the young royal opened her eyes, and scrutinised, she was starting to find the Amazon's character lacking. Undeserving of the admiration she received. Undeserving of the princess's affection.

It hurt that Diana had been so wrong with her reading.

She had given her heart too easily, and she regretted it.

""Uhhh – " Lara groaned, and stirred beneath the Amazon's palms.

The Englishwoman's eyes fluttered open. Her unfocused pupils tracked lazily from side to side, and back again. At the same time, her lips curled into a smile.

Diana prompted, "Do you know where you are?"

"Heaven?"

Lara's eyes closed again.

Eventually, while Diana and Myrene were exchanging concerned looks, the brunette murmured, "Issajoke."

Then her eyes opened again. Gazing straight up, she grinned as if drunk, "This is what Sam must have felt like on Yamatai."

She chuckled for a moment over her private joke, before attempting to sit up.

Immediately her grin contorted into a grimace. "God. Nobody has some aspirin on them by any chance, do they?"

Myrene offered her arm, and Lara used it to right herself. She still looked partly disorientated. More worrying was how heavily she was breathing. Simply sitting up had placed immense strain on her body.

Diana said as much. "Lara, be still. You may have sustained a serious head injury."

"Oh, that's pretty standard for me," the Englishwoman replied. "I just need to walk it off."

She bent her legs in preparation to stand.

_The mule-headedness of this little mortal._

"Lara, no."

"Diana. As much as I would love to embrace your cure-all of splashing about in hot springs with beautiful women again, I have things to do."

Exasperated, Diana shifted her direction of attack.

"Myrene?"

The librarian had slotted herself under Lara's left shoulder as a human crutch. Filling that role, she helped the archaeologist get to her feet.

The tone of her response mirrored Diana's own frustration. "If _you_ cannot convince her, Princess, then I certainly cannot."

Lara ignored them both.

Intervention, even if just momentary, came from an unlikely source.

Artemis stood before Lara.

"Your aim is good under pressure," the redhead said. In Lara's tongue.

The archaeologist's eyebrows rose. "You've been practicing your English."

"To speak to you."

"I'm flattered."

"Where did you learn to handle a bow?"

"School; then my archery club at university." Lara gave a wry laugh. "The Sisters of Artemis actually."

"Hmmph, good name."

Lara shrugged.

The captain of the guard cleared her throat. "You would have little effect in the front lines, but as a scout, or skirmisher, I believe we could find use for you."

"Thank you. I think."

Diana knew that Lara could not possibly understand the magnitude of the compliment she had just received. She had effectively squeezed fresh spring water from a boulder.

The Englishwoman cocked her head, which triggered a fresh wince. "May I go now?"

"You may."

Lara limped off, presumably to the Library, which she had recently chosen for her permanent quarters.

Diana was left alone with her conflicted feelings.

Lara's presence on Themyscira had changed everything. It was like an experiment the princess once witnessed in Althea's laboratory: a single drop of chemical introduced to a range of liquids. Each reaction was different, from a change in colour, to consistency, to temperature. Sometimes even the liquid's very state altered.

Lara had the same effect on the Amazons. On a case by case basis, she revealed their true nature.

Diana had been saddened by so many of the revelations. What was exposed of her mother and Mala especially.

Observing reactions to Lara had scorched away Diana's conceptions – what she had happily and unquestioningly believed of her people for so long. The once unshakeable pride she felt for the Amazon nation now was like a riverside reed that had been trampled. With great care you could possibly set it upright again, but it was forever weakened at the fracture point.

She saw things now that she never had before.

Lara, meanwhile, offered her own frustrations. Instead of feeding the fire, she dampened Diana's enthusiasm for the outside world with a cynicism not unlike the Amazonian queen's. And yet, as much as her attitude tilted towards the misanthropic, Lara was as fine a creation of her world as could be found.

Diana's admiration for the spirited little mortal grew daily.

If Man's World could produce women like Lara Croft, then there was hope for them. Hope that Hippolyta and many of her Sisters would never acknowledge.


	11. Chapter 11

"Myrene, please stop fussing over me. I said I'm – "

The librarian applied the cool compress to the side of Lara's head.

The archaeologist grimaced for an instant; then relaxed. "Oh, that is nice."

"You see?" Myrene smirked over her miniscule victory. Then she took one of Lara's hands and pressed it over the wad to keep it in place.

"You _can_ accept help from people on occasion."

The Englishwoman snorted, but gave her companion a smile that just curled the corner of her mouth.

That was enough to placate Myrene. She picked up a basin of water and a cloth, and began gently wiping the scrape on Lara's shoulder. The archaeologist hadn't felt it at all during the fight. Now, with the tide of adrenaline long receded, it stung as the librarian tended to it.

"I would feel better doing this in your chambers," Myrene muttered. "Charope would never forgive us if we soiled any parchment."

They were sitting in the main body of the Library, in an alcove that Lara had claimed as her own. Although she worked in her new room as well, this set-up was proving more convenient in terms of arm's reach access to scrolls. Not to mention the random surprise checks that had replaced her constant surveillance. Every so often Aella would appear around a corner, and Lara got to grin, "Still here."

The Englishwoman laid her palm on the paper-strewn desk before her. She replied to Myrene, "I'll risk the rage of the Head Librarian. I'm at an important stage in my research."

That was true – although in more ways than Myrene realised.

The knowledge the Themysciran records contained about the Ancient World was priceless. A complete ordering of the Egyptian Pharaohs of each Dynasty. An actual native history of the Mitanni. Records of the Nabateans and Kush. Information that bridged legend and truth – about the Queen of Sheba, Atlantis, the Trojan War, the Amazons' emergence and withdrawal.

It was phenomenal.

And the truth was entirely Lara's. On Themyscira, she could glut herself on knowledge every day for the rest of her life if she wanted.

_If she wanted._

A part of her craved such an existence, she had to admit. A honeyed voice rationalised how easy everything would be. She wouldn't even be missed. Not really. The estate solicitors would be beside themselves, but everyone else – even Sam – would simply accept Lara's disappearance as inevitable, given her lifestyle. Her luck had to run out one day.

Tears would be shed but ultimately everyone would move on.

And perhaps it would be for the best? Lara had spent so much time solving impossible mysteries while Trinity and any other number of madmen, megalomaniacs and thieves spied over her shoulder. She made their lives easier. If she wasn't around, there would be no one to lead them to the treasures their tar-black hearts desired.

Another part of her railed against such excuse-making; such complacency. While her eyes scanned over the texts, gleaning historical revelations, that other part of her was endlessly seeking for one specific piece of information.

Somewhere was the answer to that crucial question: how do you escape Themyscira?

If she couldn't find her boat, or somehow improvise a watercraft in secret, her best chance so far seemed to be Doom's Doorway. Yet every time she thought of entering a literal Hell – the mythological basis of the Christian plane of torment – her skin prickled. Even she didn't have the courage for a blind escape through Tartarus. Especially since it hinged on the scant possibility she could find the lost entrance to Man's World on the other side. And somehow pry it open.

There were too many unknowns in that plan. Too many risks.

Lara Croft had done many reckless things in her post-Yamatai life, but every single time she had only used her life as a betting chip. She worked alone because she would never gamble the lives of others intentionally. Or so she told herself. But forcing open a portal to Hell – in Themyscira, or Lara's world, or both – would definitely qualify as endangering innocents.

A sigh from Myrene tugged the archaeologist from her thoughts.

"You do not know how to rest, do you, Lara?"

"I've never really had that luxury."

"You do now. And you should take advantage. You do not look well."

Lara rolled her eyes. "Thanks to Mala." _Bloody blondes._ "Should I be worried about her?"

Myrene pondered the question for a moment. Then she shook her head. "No. Mala has a bad temper and is proud, but she is not inherently vindictive. You simply bruised her sense of self-importance. In multiple ways."

The _multiple ways_ comment pinched Lara's curiosity. "What do you mean?"

"Nobody except for Diana, and maybe Artemis, has even beaten Mala in sparring before."

"That would have been good to know."

Myrene winced, "I apologise. I should have told you. About that, and…" She swallowed, "…how Mala was Diana's chosen one for a time. I think perhaps you use the term _paramour_."

"Oh." A lot more suddenly made sense.

Myrene's head was cocked, as if waiting for a follow-up question. When it didn't come – when Lara's reaction to the revelation was so muted – Myrene's gaze dropped from her companion's face.

The librarian focused her attention back on the archaeologist's shoulder. She was deliberately avoiding Lara's eyes.

Lara was grateful for it. The atmosphere in the alcove had suddenly changed.

Charged, in fact.

Right then the Englishwoman didn't think she could cope if forced to look into grey irises as beautifully tranquil as Mediterranean waters on an overcast morning.

Years of brushing against death meant Lara's senses were hyper-tuned to ensure her survival. Yet the only sensation that registered in that instant was the combination of cloth and fingertips stroking over her flesh. Myrene's ministrations didn't hurt anymore. Instead, the act felt as good as any Swedish massage.

Lara shakily retrieved a cup of water from the table, and downed it.

Meanwhile, Myrene was trying to regenerate the conversation. Without looking up, she murmured, "You are a scholar who fights. A genuine warrior scribe."

She sounded so in awe that Lara couldn't suppress a chuckle. "The warrior part is incidental, I promise you. I never wanted – _expected_ – to spend so much of my life fighting. I've never enjoyed it."

"That is what makes you even more extraordinary."

The moment Myrene said it, she clapped her palms over her mouth. Lara blushed along with her.

"It's alright," the Englishwoman reassured.

She reached out and removed one of her Myrene's hands from her face. As Lara pried it away, the librarian slowly withdrew her other hand. For a few tantalising seconds, fingertips slid over full lips.

Lara caught herself staring.

She blinked, released her companion and turned immediately to her papers. She tried to fixate on her cool, impartial notes instead of the flesh-and-blood woman radiating warmth right next to her.

Still, all she could see was Myrene's mouth, like it was the sun and she had foolishly gazed so long that she'd burnt its image onto her retinas. No matter how much she blinked, she couldn't clear the vision.

It was a terrifying and bewildering sensation – because she couldn't remember the last time another human being, as opposed to a relic or treasure, had triggered a surge of elation within her.

She had spent so much time keeping her distance that she'd forgotten what it was like to actually _like_ someone.

And she liked Myrene a lot.

Lara tried to emotionally back-pedal; to rationalise what she was experiencing.

If she hadn't been so preoccupied with her feelings for Sam – and shoving those feelings way, way down – the librarian was exactly the type of girl she would have been drawn to at uni. Quiet, cerebral, lovely inside and out.

It made things oddly incestuous she had to admit, but Lara could see herself in Myrene. Her old, pre-Yamatai self, when she lived as an unassuming academic unstained by blood.

There were other similarities too. Myrene was not an Amazon. She wore her bracers, having been accepted into the nation centuries before, but she was a latecomer like Lara.

The librarian's ancestry ran all the way back to the Twenty-fifth Dynasty and the era of the Nubian Pharaohs. As their power extended from Upper Egypt to Lower, her family of administrators migrated north, and muddled with other ethnicities. Myrene had lived during the time of Ptolemaic rule. Her people's status had reduced to the level of servants by then, but they were still valued as stewards, and educated as a result.

Myrene, as it turned out, was blessed as well. She was the only one of her patron's household to survive a storm at sea. She washed up on Themyscira's beaches, where she was welcomed, and embraced her self-chosen role of lore keeper.

Lara's purpose was similar to the librarian's. However, the Englishwoman's baptism by shipwreck and island-stranding had revealed Hell, not Heaven.

Time with Myrene gave Lara a glimpse of the latter – that untaken path ending in a peaceful place of learning. Once that had been her dream.

"Lara, is your head bothering you?"

The Englishwoman realised she had let her eyes close as she retreated into contemplation.

She opened them again and turned to a clearly concerned Myrene.

"No. I'm – I'm fine. Sorry."

"You apologise so much."

Banter was always easier. Safer. So Lara smiled, "I'm English. It's something we do."

"I think, maybe…" Myrene frowned, "maybe someone should stay with you. To, uh, watch you. To ensure you do not experience any difficulties." She fidgeted with her fingers. "May I sup with you this evening?"

Lara felt her cheek twitch as her smile threatened to buckle. She knew what was happening, and it frightened her. It would have been simple to wave Myrene off.

Instead, Lara shrugged, "Sure. Of course. If you like."

Myrene exhaled as if she had been holding her breath for a full two minutes. Her frown gave way to a grin. "I would like."

* * *

So there they were, a couple of hours later, dining on a Library terrace that looked down over the entire Amazon capital, and the ocean beyond.

As arguably the best vantage point on Themyscira, it reminded Lara of Santorini; only with far more majestic views.

While she watched, the sky darkened from peach pink to navy blue. In response, tiny soft-edged dots of lamp and torch light appeared across the settlement.

The Englishwoman should have been enjoying the sight, but nerves were niggling her as much as a gravel speck against the ball of her foot.

Lara didn't have a problem with quiet. Normally she revelled in it. However, the silences that repeatedly sprang up between her and Myrene that evening felt awkward; cumbersome with expectation and unsaid things.

Having already eaten her souvlaki and salad, Lara had taken to inhaling wine to keep herself physically occupied during the gaps in conversation.

Myrene seemed to have adopted the same strategy. Over and over, she raised her goblet to her lips, when she wasn't gazing into its depths.

For someone who happily charged off into the unknown, the evening was proving to be petrifying, unfamiliar terrain for Lara Croft.

On rare occasion, she had played the seductress in the past, faking confidence because her body demanded sexual release. But that was different: an emotionless game with an end-goal.

With Myrene, there were no actor's masks to hide behind.

Lara felt shy and self-conscious. She was sure it showed.

Massive, twitchy discomfort was her default response to romantic interest. It always had been.

And there was no shortage of interest on Themyscira.

The archaeologist recalled a visit to Althea's laboratory. Lara was there to explain the technology she had brought to the island. In the process the scientist revealed several of her scavenged treasures, from a Spitfire fuselage to a Coke bottle.

The Amazon explained, "Items from your world wash up on our shores from time to time, the Goddesses being in a generous mood. Then I am able to examine them."

Lara joked in response, "Does that include me?"

Althea dipped her chin and peered over the top of her magnifying spectacles. As straight-faced as any of Lara's old school teachers, she said, "Lara Croft, I would examine you any time."

Even though weeks had passed since the incident, remembering it made Lara blush.

She swallowed another mouthful of wine to distract herself, cognisant of how the liquid was loosening her up.

Evidently it had the same effect on Myrene.

The librarian lowered her goblet, scrunched her face as if she had ingested something bitter; then turned suddenly to Lara. "Are you and the princess…?"

"A couple?" The question's end came to the Englishwoman in a blink.

"It is simply that you go off together for long periods, and some of us wondered…" Myrene's voice tailed off before coming back strong. "You spend a great deal of time together."

"The answer is no." Lara shook her head, "Diana is wonderful and I am grateful to her for much, but I could never…"

"Oh."

Lara recognised a flicker of a smile there.

The Englishwoman cleared her throat. "We have an expression, from team sport. _Out of my league._ Diana is very much _out of my league_. She's beyond me in every way."

"I fail to believe that anyone is beyond you, Lara Croft."

The archaeologist felt her cheeks warming again. "That's very sweet of you."

Myrene leaned in with a slightly tipsy grin. "I also do not believe you would ever let anything stop you if you wanted something… or someone."

Lara leaned in too. "Then maybe it's not Diana I want."

Her concentration was torn between Myrene's smile, and the woman's fingers splayed on the table between them.

The archaeologist went with her gut. She pressed her hand over the back of Myrene's. Ever so slowly, she stroked her fingertips along the length of her companion's digits. So slender, and soft-skinned, unlike her own.

She dared a glance at the librarian.

Myrene was staring at their hands. Hypnotised by the action. Her lips had parted, leaving a tiny triangle between them.

Well, Lara was all about exploring dark, unknown places.

She stretched her neck out, as Myrene tilted her head in invitation.

A clank of metal plate in motion.

Lara hopped backwards. Whether it was out of triggered survival instinct or irrational guilt, she wasn't sure.

She simply stood there, arms at her sides, glaring at a stunned Aella.

"Still here!" Lara hissed.

"I – I apologise for the intrusion." The guard dipped her head and vanished through the terrace entrance.

Lara slumped back against the nearby balustrade. "Fuck."

In her ears, her heartbeat sounded even noisier than Aella's armour.

At least Myrene seemed amused by the interruption. She chuckled, "If it is any consolation, I think Aella was as embarrassed as us."

The librarian topped up Lara's wine glass and handed it to her. "Here."

Then she pressed herself against the railing alongside her companion.

Both women sipped their drinks in silence for a few minutes. Lara appreciated it. It provided time for her skin to cool, her nerves to settle, and to stop feeling like someone had just burst in on her in the buff.

_Those British hang-ups again._

Eventually Myrene spoke, "You are highborn. That makes you a suitable match for Diana. You could become a bridge between our worlds."

It was a strange topic, given where they were heading before Aella's interruption, but Lara went along with it.

She replied, "I think I would have to be the queen of England for that to even begin to work. And I am definitely not that."

Myrene circled the lip of her goblet with her index finger. She might not have been drinking through, given her sober expression. "Perhaps you do not know this, but our people are not bound by the social rules and restrictions of your world in regards to couplings."

"What do you mean?"

"Polyamory is perfectly accepted. Amazons typically pair. But that is not our only form of relationship." She paused. "So even if you did feel something for Diana, or others in your world… we do not judge."

It was an invitation as explicit as tilting her head and leaning in.

_Have your cake and eat it, Lara._

While the archaeologist was processing the possibility, Myrene set aside her cup. She claimed Lara's as well, and placed it on the dining table.

Myrene turned back to her companion and took her wrist. "You have done a great deal of reading. Now it is time to experience Amazonian culture first-hand."

She guided Lara's palm to her breast.

Both women inhaled as the archaeologist's fingers pressed against the soft flesh exposed above Myrene's tunic.

Lara swallowed. "What cultural practices?"

"Courtship rituals… Love-making."

All her recent calming undone in seconds.

The archaeologist was breathing, yet she didn't seem to be drawing enough air into her lungs. She resisted the panic that accompanied smothering.

"I – " she started. _I'm not good for you._ But that argument didn't stand on isolated Themyscira.

"I – " she stammered. "I'm not good at intimacy."

"You have done this before?"

"This?" Lara made her own interpretation. "Just once. A very long time ago."

The night she gave her heart, let it fill with another's adoration, stole it back in darkness, and buried it.

Of course, Myrene didn't know any of that.

The librarian cupped Lara's cheek in her free palm, "I have helped you much. Let me help you again. Through practice."

Without releasing her companion's hand, Myrene stood.

Silent, Lara let herself be led.

* * *

She woke to cheerful pre-dawn twittering.

Lara lay flat on her back with her eyes closed, and listened.

She felt completely relaxed; light in a way that she had only experienced once before. Back in the hospital in Macedonia. For those few minutes after her rebirth, before everything went so horribly wrong, she was carefree.

She felt like that now. Even if it was largely the product of post-coital hormones swirling around in her system, she was at peace. Truly. She smiled in the darkness.

Since the Aegis incident, she had vowed to move on; to stop dwelling on things that couldn't be. But taking that final leap of faith, of heart… She had continued to shy away from _that_.

All those years spent avoiding anything that might remind her. She'd believed for the longest time that she could never again experience something like that night in New York – that any attempt at repeating it would always be more bitter than sweet. The one time she did try, it had been a disaster.

But she was wrong.

It was possible. Her confirmation bias had simply convinced her to abandon the experiment too soon.

The archaeologist turned her head.

For a heartbeat, she startled at the realisation it wasn't Sam next to her.

The reassuring physical presence belonged to Myrene, curled on her side under the sheets. They'd fallen asleep clutching hands.

Lara slowly raised their entwined fingers to her mouth, and kissed the librarian's knuckles. Then she bent over and kissed Myrene's forehead.

A tiny crease formed between the woman's eyebrows as she mumbled nonsense. Once she stopped talking, it vanished immediately, and she was once more a picture of serenity.

Adorable. And gorgeous.

Lara watched her companion sleep undisturbed for a few minutes more. Meanwhile, Myrene's chamber brightened with morning light.

Lara's smile broadened into a grin. Three thoughts rang out and repeated just like bird song.

It was going to be a beautiful day.

Contentment was possible.

And she was allowed to feel happy.

Maybe not forever, the usual dispassionate voice between her ears reminded her; but certainly in moments.

Right then, she was willing to accept that trade-off for the rest of her life.

_Croft, you need to get laid more often._

Lara reached for her tank top, which had been flung on the floor the night before. It was close enough that she didn't have to move too much and disturb Myrene. Getting to her cargo's required more of a stretch.

Once she had the fabric in her hand, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the mattress so she could easily pull the trousers over her panties.

While she was busy tying up her hair, arms snaked around her from behind. Lips skimmed along her shoulder blade.

She glanced backwards, straight into a pair of puppy-dog eyes.

Lara chuckled, "I should go."

"Why?" Myrene pouted.

Lara twisted to peck those same pouty lips. "People will talk," she murmured.

"We are on an island of women. Of course people will talk."

As Lara laughed, Myrene tightened her embrace. "They are probably talking right now. Neither of us was exactly quiet. And in the Library of all places.

"Oh, right," Lara flushed, before returning her companion's playful grin. "But somehow I can't bring myself to regret it."

"Me neither." A groggy but sated Myrene suckled on the side of Lara's neck. "Stay."

Before the archaeologist could argue back, Myrene initiated a kiss that had Lara breathless and blindly tearing at her trousers.

"Stay," Myrene repeated.

"Since you asked so nicely," the Englishwoman gasped.

She tumbled back into Myrene's arms.

As Lara nuzzled her face into her lover's throat, she recalled a few stories Roth had let slip about her father's bachelor days. It fortified her smile.

_Guess I'm more like dad than I thought._

Beneath her, Myrene arched towards her lips and hands.

Lara allowed herself to sink into sensation. No thinking; just feeling. So much lithe warmth sliding against her skin. It was like lowering herself into the pools of the hot springs all over again.

A purr against her ear. "You will remember me?"

The question was as sobering as a face slap.

"What?" Lara drew back onto her haunches. "What do you mean?"

The librarian propped herself up on her elbows.

"Lara, I am no fool. I know you have no desire to stay."

Myrene's smirk inverted under the weight of obvious melancholy. She sighed, "This will not last. It never does. Themyscira may be paradise but that does not mean the absence of pain. Women have died here. They have chosen to end their lives because they can no longer endure the loneliness."

It was a horrible thought.

Lara frowned, "If you knew what I intended, then why did you pursue this?"

The librarian reached out and caressed Lara's cheek. "Because I still get this brief time with you. The alternative is the true anguish; one that I am too familiar with." A sliver of shine appeared along her lower eyelids. "In all my years, I never found anyone here..."

Myrene shook her head. She blinked and cleared her throat. When she spoke again, it was with a complete steadiness of voice and expression. "I wish that you would stay. You could be happy here. Content. I know. But I also know I cannot ask you to do that. We make our own choices, and must respect when others do the same."

"Myrene…"

The woman applied a finger to Lara's mouth.

"I have lived long enough that I do not believe in happy endings, Lara. Only happy chapters."

_Such wisdom. Such mournful wisdom._

Lara nodded. "Then let's enjoy this one while it is open before us."

She pressed forward, and Myrene wrapped her arms around her in a shuddering embrace.


	12. Chapter 12

She had passed a restless night – a situation she was not at all accustomed to. But her mind had been swirling like rapids at full flood. Even when she did eventually doze off, her dreams were saturated with the same thoughts and possibilities, distorted and tumbling over themselves.

Eventually, she had given up on sleep.

She washed, dressed, and made the brisk walk from the palace to the Library.

Perhaps it was still too early in the morning for it to be considered polite, but she could no longer wait. She had to act while her courage crested.

The corridor that led to the academics' private quarters was as empty as she hoped.

_Good._

With her nerve holding, she proceeded to her intended destination.

Her fist was raised to knock when she heard a voice to her left.

"Diana, hey. What's up?"

Hands tucked into her pockets, the archaeologist was sauntering in her direction. She looked dazed but not in any concerning way. Nothing like the immediate aftermath of her fight with Mala, or the effects of the Lasso.

"Lara," the princess smiled. "I came to see how you are feeling."

"Pretty good, actually." The brunette yawned, and rubbed her neck. "Though I didn't get much sleep last night."

"Me neither."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

A few beats of silence. They stretched into something longer – impossible to dismiss as inconsequential.

Finally, Lara cocked her head. "Do you want to speak to me about something else?"

"I – "

Diana could have retreated then. But no. Amazons conquered fear.

She tried to keep the tremor from her voice. "May we walk?"

Lara's eyebrows pinched together, before relaxing once more. "Sure."

Diana steered them towards the Library terrace.

As they walked, the Amazon surreptitiously observed her companion.

Lara was distracted, but cheerful. She kept stroking her bottom lip. It was curled, like the rest of her mouth, in an amused smile.

For once, the women's roles were reversed.

They arrived on the terrace. Together they looked out over Themyscira. The sun rose in a cloudless sky. It was going to be another perfect day in Diana's golden, goddess-blessed world.

The princess clenched the balcony railing in her fists. She closed her eyes and lowered her chin to her chest.

_Courage._

She felt Lara draw close to her side.

"Diana." Concern was clear in the Englishwoman's voice. "I assume this is something important. How can I hel– "

Diana seized Lara's face in her hands, and kissed her.

" _Mmumph_." A started sound from the base of the mortal's throat.

She stiffened in Diana's grip; so much so that the Amazon drew back.

So much of her energy had been consumed by anxiety leading to that moment that Diana was breathless.

Chest heaving, she stared at Lara, just as Lara stared at her.

The Englishwoman's expression was one of shock. Not hatred. Nor happiness. She had been stunned numb, as if something had broken within her.

Desperate for any response, Diana pressed her mouth to Lara's again. She deepened the kiss; tilting her own head to better accommodate their height difference.

She was trembling with the effort she put into the act.

Fingers closed around her wrists.

Gently, Diana's hands were withdrawn from Lara's cheeks.

Then, slowly, the archaeologist detached from the kiss.

"Diana," she murmured, "what are you doing?"

There was no furious judgement in her eyes or tone – both of which Diana's nightmares had insisted she expect.

"I thought…," the Amazon confessed, "perhaps… if you are not from here, perhaps it would be different."

"And?"

"No." Liquid welled in her eyes. Her voice cracked. "…Lara, I am so sorry."

"Don't be, Princess."

The fractures in the dam wall fingered out. They thickened. Finally they ruptured. Diana burst into tears. She hid her face in her palms as she sobbed.

Her admiration of the archaeologist… For so long she thought it indicated something more. She had been so sure it was a sign. But neither Lara nor she experienced the connection she was adamant existed.

She felt like a fool.

She slumped back against the railing.

"No, no, no," Lara crooned. Her arm went around the Amazon. "Ssshhhhhhh."

Diana turned into the embrace. She continued to shudder as Lara stroked her back and soothed her verbally.

"It's alright. You didn't do anything wrong."

"I was so certain," Diana muttered into her companion's throat. She looked up into Lara's pitying eyes. "I am never to truly know romantic love, am I?"

"Your heart is so large, I can't imagine you won't. I hope you do." The Englishwoman encouraged, "But until then, there are many different kinds of love. And you are surrounded by so much."

Lara tugged on the hem of her shirt and raised it to dry Diana's cheek. "You are adored, Princess. I miss my mother so much. You have hundreds of mums. Sisters too."

"Thank you for your kindness," Diana sniffed.

"Any time." Lara squeezed her companion's hand. "And I'm flattered, truly. I like you a lot, Diana. It's just that the 'Explorer falls in love with the stunning princess of an exotic, long-lost kingdom' trope has never been my thing."

"I apologise. I should never have sprung my feelings on you like that."

"I'm a big girl. Well, not by Amazon standards," Lara laughed. "But I can take it."

The little brunette got to her feet. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

She was. While Diana still battled to siphon off the worst of her disappointment, the archaeologist returned with what had become known as her tea set. She served the Amazon first, then poured herself some of the brewed beverage as well. Finally, she tapped her drinking vessel against Diana's.

"The Americans have ice cream, but this is the panacea of my people. Cheers."

The Englishwoman was still buoyant. Uncharacteristically so.

Diana said as much.

"You are in high spirits."

The observation seemed to shake Lara as much as the kiss. Her smile crumpled.

"Last night, I, um…" She fumbled with her words; then darted her eyes from Diana's face. "I, uh, experienced some, uh…." She chuckled nervously, "…cultural immersion."

Diana was dedicated to learning as many of Lara's colloquialisms as possible, but she had yet to encounter that phrase.

Her companion recognised her confusion. Lara inhaled deeply and looked away.

"Myrene and I…"

Diana almost dropped her cup.

_Of course!_ The flush in Lara's cheeks. The relaxed set of her shoulders. The small oval of discoloration on her throat, and a second just below her collarbone.

"Oh, Goddesses!" Diana blurted. "Lara, I am so sorry. If I had known I would never… Please forgive me."

"You have nothing to apologise for." Lara sighed, "In fact, now I feel like I'm the one who should apologise for saying anything. In this instant, well, it doesn't exactly help things."

"No. I am glad that you are happy." Diana reached out and grasped the Englishwoman's forearm. "Truly."

Lara's grin returned.

The mortal was always beautiful. However, joy acted on her like light on a cut gem. Every facet dazzled. Her innate loveliness was amplified, and became exquisite. Breathtakingly exquisite.

Diana admired Lara while the brunette sipped her tea and gazed ahead. The archaeologist was back in her head. She evidently spent more time exploring it than her beloved tombs, and was even more comfortable there.

The princess was reluctant to haul Lara from the haven. Yet her own lost sleep had stemmed from more than simple anxiety. The prospect of confession aside, she had passed the night rolling over questions as bothersome as rocks under her mattress.

Eventually, she ventured, "What are men like?"

Lara smirked over the rim of her cup. "I'm the wrong person to ask. Mostly they seem out to kill me."

"Have you…," Diana's voice dipped, "lain with one?"

Lara choked on her tea. When she recovered, she replied with exasperation. "I am absolutely certain your mother doesn't want me answering that…"

"You have then?"

The Englishwoman sighed, "A lady never kisses and tells, Diana."

"Please."

After glancing in all directions, Lara finally relented. Her voice remained low, her expression pained.

"I have _lain_ with a couple."

"What was it like?"

"Nice, I suppose." Lara's posture bellowed her discomfort. "I enjoyed the experience physically, for the most part. But I always felt like something was missing, I guess emotionally." She shrugged, "For me, personally. For you, that may not be true."

"I see."

Although, if the princess applied an instant of further thought, she realised she could not see. On all-women Themyscira, she never could. It was impossible.

Lara was frowning at her.

"Diana, please don't ever believe that men are bad, or innately lacking. What happened to your people was unforgivable. And I haven't had the best experiences myself. But there are _many_ good men out there.

"After I lost my parents, there was one man who stepped up. He taught me so much; told me stories about my parents so I wouldn't forget them. He didn't have to; there was no legal responsibility, but he did what he could to ensure I retained a connection to them, and was prepared for life alone. Without him, his teachings, and his sacrifice, I would have been dead half a decade ago."

Lara's shoulders drooped. "He was gruff – his background was military – so it wasn't easy for him to express his feelings. He couldn't verbally communicate a lot, actually, but his heart was gold. There was nothing he wouldn't do for the people he loved. And he was honestly more like a father to me than my own dad."

Looking at Lara in that moment, Diana suspected the archaeologist took after that man more than she realised.

"Thank you for your honesty, Lara. It is sometimes difficult to receive that here."

Diana clasped the Englishwoman's hand.

Lara squeezed back. "You'd be surprised how rarely I get to speak the truth as I've seen it."

They were still smiling at one another when a voice snapped off to their left.

"Daughter. Lady Croft."

Diana turned to her mother.

Instantly the queen stiffened. Rage flared in her pupils.

She could see her child had been crying. Her prejudices meant she was quick to assume Lara was responsible.

The archaeologist, meanwhile, was no fool. She had reached the same conclusion as Diana.

Lara swallowed, evidently afraid to break eye contact with the furious queen in case a locked gaze was the only protection she had, like a length of spear wedged between them.

But Diana's mother had ruled for millennia. Her temper obeyed her will in the same way her people submitted to her judgement.

Hippolyta lifted her head. Straight-backed, she spoke. Her voice was entirely even and without emotion. "Lady Croft, I was hoping that today I might talk with you?"

Lara swallowed again, but to her credit she did not stutter her response. "Yes. Of course."

She disentangled her fingers from Diana's, and stood.

The princess slipped from the railing too. She hoped that standing alongside her friend in such a manner was a subtle reminder to her mother how highly Lara was valued. By Diana and many other Amazons.

"Daughter," the queen frowned, "I wish to speak to Lara Croft alone."

Diana realised in that instant that Hippolyta was without her queen's guard. Whatever she wished to discuss, clearly she wanted no other Amazon to hear.

The princess dipped her head in deference.

Hippolyta extended her arm. "Lady Croft, let us."

Lara stepped forward, positioning herself next to the Amazon ruler. Together they departed.

Lara's final act was a glance back over her shoulder. Her expression was equal parts pain and puzzlement.

* * *

Diana finished her tea. The act kept her occupied while she waited. It was not long that needed to delay. She simply wanted her mother and Lara engrossed in their conversation.

When she was happy enough time had passed, the princess set aside her cup and strode down the passage that linked the terrace with the Library's main hallway.

She knew what she did was dangerous. She had already exhausted her mother's patience since Lara's arrival. Silence and being shut out from her graces was one thing. To immediately disobey a command from the Queen of the Amazons warranted the harshest punishment.

But Diana needed to know what was being said. Hippolyta had been distant for too long.

At the plaza the princess did not follow the road back to the palace and Themysciran settlement. She headed left, clambering up onto a bank. She had to wade through brush and bramble, but she found what she was looking for – a trail sometimes used by deer and boar when they lacked the courage to trot the same route as the island's two-legged inhabitants.

Diana's advantage was that she alone had grown up on the island. A child's curiosity and boredom had guided her explorations off accepted tracks. She knew secret paths and hiding places that no one else did. It meant she could spy on her mother and Lara without being noticed. If she were careful. Fortunately, she was well practiced since childhood at that as well.

She caught up with the pair as Lara was grimacing.

"...don't use my title if I can help it."

"As you wish. Lara."

The Englishwoman perked up, "I have to say now though, if you're after a snog, I think I've already filled my quota for the day."

"A _what_?" Hippolyta growled.

Lara's grin died. "Sorry. It – it's a joke. And I know Amazons aren't big on those."

The conversation was not going well. The queen's frown deepened, while the archaeologist shook her head at her own foolishness.

Eventually Hippolyta spoke again. "I must congratulate you on your performance in the training arena yesterday. That was a rare feat you accomplished. Even Artemis was impressed, I hear."

"Oh. Uh, thank you." The Englishwoman added with a shrug, "I was just trying to get through it."

"You are full of surprises, Lara Croft. Woe betide anyone who underestimates you. I have already made that mistake."

"And yet here you are speaking to me alone. Or do you have a company of archers hiding somewhere?" The archaeologist glanced around, and Diana leaped behind cover just in time.

"My bodyguard is here." Hippolyta patted the sword pommel on her left hip.

"Always prepared."

"One has to be when one has nobody else to rely on. I believe you would agree?"

"Absolutely, Your Highness."

Hippolyta cocked her head. "I do not understand you, Lara..."

"And you've been a lot deeper inside me than anyone else," chortled the archaeologist. "Normally people have to buy me at least a few drinks first."

Hippolyta ignored the comment.

"You have been touched by Athena. You enjoy patronage of the Grey-eyed Goddess. That has been unheard of for millennia. And never before has She, in her vast wisdom, blessed a lone woman _hero_."

Lara winced at the queen's last word. "I still don't really believe it. Even here, where the influence of the Pantheon remains so strong… and _tangible_."

"If you have been judged worthy by Pallas Athena, then that should be enough for me. And yet, I have looked into your soul like you said. What I saw there was…concerning."

Lara shifted her gaze to the stone beneath her boots. "Are you going to ask about my intentions towards Diana?"

"My daughter is quite taken with you, Lara. I see that."

"She's only curious."

"Curiosity is dangerous. You are dangerous. For the security of our world. For Diana especially. She is no longer a child – I am not a mother deluded by nostalgia – but she is inexperienced. That can get her hurt. Badly."

"I –"

As Lara opened her mouth, the queen raised her hand in interruption. "I know you did not plant the seed of Diana's rebellion, but you have certainly watered it, and tended to the resulting seedling."

The princess could feel herself bristling. All these discussions about her. Not with her.

Hippolyta continued, "I have let things, I think you say, _slide_ until now."

Evidently Diana was not alone in losing her temper. Irritation twanged in every word of Lara's reply.

"Look, I never came here to corrupt your daughter. Or anyone else for that matter."

She did not back down, verbally or physically, when the Queen of the Amazons stopped, and scrutinised her.

"I have spent a long time thinking about your presence here, Lara. Whether I should accept the will of the Goddess without question – to trust as I should – or to prioritise the safety of my people, whether they believe it is for their good or not."

"And what is your conclusion?"

Diana craned her neck out, desperate for her mother's answer.

But in that moment, the pair passed through the archway that marked the boundary of the Themysciran capital.

"Gaea's girdle!" the princess hissed. Listening in on the conversation had become considerably more complicated.

* * *

A couple of back streets, balcony hops and roof scampers later, Diana caught up with her mother and Lara as they entered the palace.

Lara was still prickly. "Just because I come from Man's World doesn't mean I have the same agenda you associate with Men."

"Yet there is so much of it in your past: Destruction and death."

"Every time my hand was forced. Or it was an accident. I live with that every single day."

The corridors in the royal building were too narrow and too well-guarded to make eavesdropping feasible. Diana had to predict where the women would end up.

Fortunately her guess was accurate. She had just hauled herself onto the veranda that fronted her mother's rooms when the pair entered.

Hippolyta was mid-explanation. "…delicate balance. Our knowledge repositories are free and open to every Amazon. That, however, does not apply to what I keep here in my private quarters. _You_ have upset that balance."

"And _you_ expect me to lie to Diana and your people when they ask me questions? That's not how I work."

Hippolyta sighed. "Of all the women here I have a better understanding of your world than anyone."

"How?"

The sound of a curtain being drawn back. Followed immediately by Lara gasping, " _Unbelievable_."

Diana could not see the Englishwoman's face in that moment, but she knew precisely the look Lara wore. It would be the same as when she saw the Library for the first time. An expression of pure, childlike delight.

"An actual magic mirror!"

The princess peeked into her mother's chamber. As expected, Lara stood gaping; her hand stretched towards the sacred artefact.

Hippolyta looked on, impassive. "We call it the Sphere. It was a gift from Athena Herself when Themyscira became our home. It allows me to see your world – its present, its past and, occasionally, its future."

Lara withdrew her fingers. She clenched them into a fist. "I know people who would kill for such power."

"It is not a power I have ever enjoyed." Hippolyta swallowed, "The pain of looking on so much suffering and degradation can be agonising. But I must be informed, so that I can make the correct decisions for my people. And I think you understand such difficulty, Lara."

The queen rounded on the outsider. Standing before the little brunette, she placed her hands on her shoulders.

"How many secrets have you kept for yourself, not because you are selfish but because you believe it is better for your world not to know the truth?"

Lara remained silent, but a frown set over her features.

"You and I are similar," Hippolyta continued. "I am not blind to the advances in Man's World since we departed; the good that Mankind has done. Cures for diseases that were once a death sentence; engineering marvels that have improved the lives of billions. But you seem to be once again going backwards. Compassion is shrivelling, and with it you are regressing. Losing all your gains."

"I won't disagree with you, Your Highness."

"Now more than ever it is important I shield my people. A loss of humanity combined with your technological advances is a deadly combination."

Hippolyta released her companion. She wandered over to a tapestry that depicted the early days of Amazonian history. She ran a finger over its woven surface. "Once I made a mistake that caused unfathomable suffering for my Sisters. It cost many their lives. With so few of us left now, I cannot let that happen again."

Lara hung back. "You've made a decision about me."

The queen nodded. "What if I were to allow you to leave this place?"

"What?!"

"An immediate departure from Themyscira. I return your craft and your tools, and you leave. Never to speak of us and never to return. You go back to your world, and your disruptive influence ends here."

Diana had expected Lara to be vociferous with delight. Yet she looked as stunned as when the princess ambushed her with a kiss.

"What say you?" Hippolyta prompted. "This _is_ what your restless soul desires, is it not?"

"I – "

The doors to the royal quarters swung open.

Philippus and Artemis strode in, side by side. As always they made a striking visual contrast of Amazonian diplomacy and military might. Silk and steel. Yet for once their expressions matched exactly.

Distress. Deep distress.

"What is it?" Hippolyta asked with consternation.

Philippus swallowed. "I apologise for the interruption, my Queen, but this could not wait. One of the dawn patrols, they encountered something _strange_. Out by the Northern Bluffs. They brought it down, but we cannot identify it."

"It?"

In response to the queen's question, Artemis gestured to a group of four Amazons lined up in the doorway. One of the women – who Diana identified as Okyale – stepped forward. In her arms she carried a cloak, wrapped around something no bigger than a standard household amphora.

Okyale lay her bundle on the floor before Hippolyta. Immediately, as per protocol, Artemis and two of the other Amazons stepped between their queen and the mysterious object. The trio raised their shields.

Philippus muttered from behind her own guard, "We have sent for Althea but this… this does not look like one of her toys."

Okyale drew back the fabric.

Diana could not see the contents of the bundle, but she could hear clearly enough.

Among the confused mutterings, Lara alone spoke clearly.

"A drone," she declared. "It's a drone."

Then she staggered backwards. "Oh, God. _No_!"

Hippolyta had her blade drawn in a heartbeat.

The distraught Englishwoman was given no time to defend herself.

Metal bit into the side of her neck.

Lara simply froze, staring back at her attacker.

The queen's fury was beyond anything Diana had ever witnessed before.

Like one of Actaeon's hounds sent feral, she snarled, "I warned you, Lara Croft. The punishment for treason is death!"


	13. Chapter 13

Lara wanted to be sick.

More powerfully though, she felt the urge to laugh – to shake her head and vent the wry chuckle battering about in her throat like a moth.

_Of course._

Of course this was happening. On a day of love and solutions to her escape quandary. She let herself feel happy. She actually let herself believe it was going to be a perfect day.

_Lara, you complete and utter berk._

But she couldn't laugh. She doubted even an attack of madness would save her. And the steel of Hippolyta's blade was already biting into her neck. Blood welled and trickled from parted flesh.

She supposed she could spit a denial, claim innocence, but she _was_ guilty. She knew what had happened – what always happened.

She had led them. Who else could it be? She had put another people in the path of Trinity's rifle-toting army of zealots. It would be a massacre. The Amazons, for all their ferocity, would be slaughtered in a rain of armour-piercing bullets. It was entirely her fault. Again.

She deserved this death.

Hippolyta was still raging. "…expect nothing better of Mankind. Even their women have been poisoned with wickedness and disloyalty."

The queen raised her hand. Two of the Amazons strode forward. They seized Lara, pinning her arms behind her back, binding them. Then they drove her to her knees.

Their prisoner didn't resist. Lara kept her eyes on the queen during the entire process.

Hippolyta stepped forward again. "Before you die, I want to know how you fooled the Lasso? How?!"

"I didn't."

"You cling to your lies? Even now?"

"And you cling to your prejudices," Lara muttered.

That perhaps wasn't the smartest thing to say.

Hippolyta's sword swung back.

Behind the queen, even Philippus and Artemis startled.

Perhaps the expectation was that Lara would cringe, eyes clenched in her final moments. But she kept her head raised, her gaze steady.

So she saw Diana scramble into the room by the balcony entrance.

"Mother, _NO_! By the Goddesses, stop!"

Hippolyta paused with her strike still readied. "Daughter, your pet is diseased and rabid."

"You cannot believe that Lara deliberately did this. Look to your heart. Look deep into hers again if you must."

Hippolyta's eyes narrowed. "There is no hope for her and her people, Diana. Treachery flows in their blood. It is who they are. They are incapable of change; this is simply another example."

"And you are incapable of change too, Mother. You have allowed your distrust to rob you of sight like the strongest distilled liquors."

"Diana!"

"You have spent so long focused on betrayal that it has become all you can see. But now is not a time for us to be blinded by old hates. We require clear eyes and heads."

Philippus stepped forward. "The princess speaks with wisdom, my Queen."

Hippolyta let her sword arm sag.

She clutched her face. "That this day has finally come. Everything I have done to protect our people… and it was not enough. I failed."

Philippus continued her approach. She placed her palm on the queen's shoulder.

Hippolyta took in her companion's consolatory expression, before addressing the archaeologist. "You deny that you led these outsiders here?"

Lara swallowed. "They must have followed me."

"But it was not intentional," the princess interjected.

Finally that sardonic chuckle fluttered out.

Lara laughed, "Of course not. But what difference does it make, Diana? The outcome is the same. They have arrived and your people are in danger. Because of me."

"How?" Hippolyta hissed. "How could they have found their way to our home?"

The possibilities lined up neatly in Lara's mind. "I don't know; any number of reasons. They were always following me. They placed tracking devices on my equipment. They bribed the ship's captain for the coordinates I gave him; or they killed him for it. They pieced together a copy of my research on their own, which led them here."

That last scenario was most troubling. If that was the case, Trinity had some of its brightest, and most dangerous, recruits leading this expedition.

"Who is this ' _They_?'"

"Judging by that drone, Trinity."

Hippolyta's jaw clenched. "I have never encountered mention of this Trinity."

"It's unlikely you would've. Even you. They're a secret organisation, centuries old. They began as a fanatical religious sect. Now, well, they're far from godly in any respect. But they're wealthy and well-equipped. And organised."

"We have nothing to do with your God. Why would Trinity come here?"

The answer came easily. Way too easily. Lara grimaced. "Your healing pools. Your immortality. Your treasures. Access to Tartarus and its inhabitants. Any of those would give Trinity the power they've always wanted. They would become gods on this earth, standing above all."

"How many of them are there?"

"It… varies. I've had to deal with entire private armies before. Other times, just a handful of agents."

Hippolyta turned to Artemis. "Dispatch a band of scouts to the Northern Bluffs. The fleetest of foot. They are to find this Trinity and monitor them. We need to know their numbers and what else they have brought to our island. Engagement is to be avoided unless absolutely essential."

"Yes, my Queen." The redhead dipped her head in deference. When she lifted it again, her eyes flitted over Lara's. There was concern there on the commander's part. Or remorse. Perhaps she never expected to see the archaeologist alive again.

She gave Lara a tiny, tight-lipped nod before striding for the entrance.

"Philippus," Hippolyta said next. "Dispatch messengers. Every Amazon must gather for a War Council in the amphitheatre. Immediately."

Diana piped up again. "A War Council? Mother, are we not escalating the situation unnecessarily? We do not know Trinity's intentions. If we can first confer with them peacefully, maybe – "

Both Lara and Hippolyta responded with a sceptical bark.

The two women blinked at each other, before the archaeologist replied to Diana. "Trinity has only one objective, and that is to take what they want. Everything else they destroy."

"Exactly like you, Lara Croft," Hippolyta added.

Lara winced. The queen's words pierced faster and deeper than any blade.

Still, Diana clung white-knuckled to her idealism. "Let us meet with them first. Talk. This does not have to begin with bloodshed."

Remorsefully, Lara began to pry at the princess's fingers. "There is _always_ bloodshed with Trinity. The loss of my parents – I grew up thinking it was a cruel act of Fate. Now though, the more I encounter those madmen and learn of their history, the more I suspect they played a part. They murdered my parents. This is not a group you can discuss with. They are ruthless. You extend a hand, they thrust out a knife."

Diana's face crumpled.

"Enough." Hippolyta waved her sword at the Amazons still restraining Lara. "Put this one in a cell. She will face consequences later."

"Mother!"

The queen spun to face her daughter. "Diana, _ENOUGH_! Your insubordination has no place."

The princess stood her ground though – with none of the sullenness Lara knew she would have displayed in the same situation.

"You are making a mistake," Diana stated.

Her manner sheared off the queen's thorns. The tension visible in Hippolyta's every muscle vanished. That encouraged her daughter to continue.

"Imprisoning Lara now of all times is a grievous error. She is as much an Amazon as any of us. A warrior. We train constantly and we compete, but she has actual combat experience against our enemy. We need her knowledge."

Daughter and mother stared at each other – a mirrored image of cool will.

Philippus shuffled from foot to foot in preparation to speak.

Hippolyta pre-empted the chancellor with a clipped, "I know what you wish to say."

The Amazon ruler's gaze shifted to Diana. "Very well."

And then to Lara. "You have a reprieve. For now."

The queen's next instruction was delivered to the chamber as a whole. "A guard is to be at the outsider's side at _all_ times. Not for one instant is she to go unmonitored."

Hippolyta sheathed her sword and turned for the door.

Diana looked at Lara with relaxed-shoulders relief. Yet for her gratitude, the archaeologist could not share the princess's sentiment. She'd learned her lesson. It wasn't even mid-morning yet, and the day had hammered home how reckless it was to lower her guard. Even for a second. It endangered her, and it endangered others around her.

The queen reiterated that point as she scowled back over her shoulder.

"Let it be recorded in the histories. 'War came to the soil of Themyscira. Because of Lara Croft.'"


	14. Chapter 14

The War Council proceeded as Diana had expected.

By the time all the Amazons assembled, and news of the invaders was shared, Artemis's scouts had returned with their initial findings. A giant map of the island was laid out in the arena, and the threat was marked on it for everyone to see.

A force of fifty or so men had brought watercraft up onto the beaches of Medusa's Cove. There they were setting up camp, partially protected by the jumble of boulders and granite pillars that gave the bay its name.

At hearing "fifty", Mala had laughed loudly, "I like those numbers."

Others joined her in expressing their mirth.

Lara spoke up then. She stood to the side of the map, flanked by Artemis and Aella. Her voice rose clear in the amphitheatre.

"If there are fifty on the beach, expect another dozen scouts of their own."

"Still good odds," Mala declared.

More communally expressed amusement.

After shock at the initial announcement, the Amazons seemed to have accepted the prospect of battle. Some, like Mala, relished it.

Lara turned to Artemis. "Your scouts encountered no other men? No drones?"

"No."

Hippolyta spoke from the royal balcony alongside Philippus and Diana. "Althea, can the invaders communicate with others in Man's World; guide them here."

The Amazonian scientist stood to the other side of the map. She shook her head. "No. The Veil that protects us affects their electromagnetic technology. I have seen its effects first-hand on the equipment Lara brought. Those that are here are cut off from their realm."

"Shall we storm the beach, my Queen?" Artemis asked.

Before Hippolyta could respond, Lara barked, "No! Trinity fortifies their encampments. They will be heavily armed, and probably equipped with mounted machine guns. I don't care how fast you are, you can't deflect all those bullets."

"It matters not should some of us fall," Mala called. "We will crush them in our swiftness, and with our superiority."

"Maybe," Lara grimaced, "but it is possible to avoid _any_ loss of life with the right, cautious approach." She swung her head towards the queen of the Amazons. "I can infiltrate the camp on my – "

"Out of the question."

Lara's shoulders drooped.

"However, your point is not without validity," the queen sighed. "The old days are past. And to base strategy on them is a vanity we cannot afford. This is a new age of warfare, and we contend with a foe we have never faced before."

"What would you have us do?" a voice cried out from the stands.

Hippolyta focused on Artemis. "Captain, you are to lead a squad of your best. No more than ten. Lara Croft will accompany you."

The redheaded Amazon and brunette Englishwoman glanced at each other.

Hippolyta continued, "By cover of night, you will enter their camp. Disable their armaments, thin their ranks. Then our main fighting force will enter the fray."

Senator Tecmessa stood. "Amazons are not rogues and assassins, my Queen."

Murmured assent rose from the seats circling the arena.

Hippolyta raised her hand. "I hear your words, Sister, but hear me. We are not assassins but we are also not immortal. There are so few of us left, every drop of Amazon blood is to be preserved, however that may be accomplished. This is a dishonourable enemy, and their blades will _not_ be given the opportunity to sink into Amazonian hearts exposed in our commitment to honourable combat."

Tecmessa nodded, and sank back down.

"This is my judgement on the matter," Hippolyta continued, steel-spined with authority. "The day has arrived that we have prepared for, Sisters. We all know our responsibilities. By the Goddesses, _for_ the Goddesses, fight well!"

Cheers rang out as the queen strode from the podium.

* * *

The War Council was followed by a private strategy meeting in the Palace. Lara was excluded, but Artemis was there, as were other high-ranked commanders. With Hippolyta, they stood in a circle around a table-sized map of Themyscira.

Diana was allowed to be present, but her place was not among the military decision-makers. She had to stand in a second semi-circle with Philippus and other government representatives. They had no say; they were present only so that they could provide information and instructions to their constituents based on the meeting's outcomes.

When the gathering finally broke up, Hippolyta placed her hand on Artemis's shoulder. It was a private exchange, but Diana was close enough to hear her mother's words.

"If Lara Croft does anything to betray us, put her down immediately."

Should Artemis have had any deep feeling about that order, she did not express it. "Use lethal force?" she asked simply.

"I leave that to your discretion. Relay the message to everyone in your unit."

"Yes, my Queen."

Once the women filed out, Diana could finally ask the question that had been grating her all day like a chunk of pumice.

"And what is to be my role in this battle, Mother?"

"Your role is to be that of an obedient daughter."

_What a strange comment._

Diana frowned, "Yes. Of course."

"…an obedient daughter who stays here."

The princess felt as if her legs had been swept from beneath her.

She spluttered, suddenly breathless, "You jest?"

A rumble of warning, deep as thunder, was unmistakable in Hippolyta's tone. "Diana…"

"This is what we prepare for, ceaselessly. Our sacred responsibility. All Amazons fight. All Amazons are expected to defend Them–"

"But you are not _all_ Amazons. You are as above us as we are above Men."

Diana staggered backwards, shaking her head. "I cannot believe this."

Hippolyta made no attempt to narrow the gap between them. "Trinity comes for the Amazons' most precious artefacts if what Lara Croft says is true. And you, Diana, are my greatest treasure. _Our_ greatest treasure as a people. None of my sisters would dispute this."

"Treasure? A _thing_? I am a thing to you, to be locked away?"

Diana spun her body toward Philippus. The chancellor had always been softer on Diana than her mother, and she held great sway over the queen.

"Philippus? Please," she begged.

But the Amazon refused to meet her gaze. She addressed the floor instead. "I stand with your mother on this, Princess. You are too loved and too important to risk."

With no aid in that direction, Diana returned once more to the queen.

"Please, Mother," she entreated. "At least let me be in your guard. Your War Party. Simply to observe, for educational purposes. I will not even fight."

Hippolyta's laugh was incredulous. "I said no, Diana."

She had been trying to smother it, but her mother's laugh was a gust on glowing coals.

Diana yelled, "You would me be a child forever! Soft and useless."

"No," Hippolyta countered coolly. "I ensure your hands remain unbloodied and your soul unstained for as long as possible."

Diana glared at her mother. She knew it was childish but she wanted to see rage there to mirror her own. Hippolyta, though, was in complete control of herself. The impending conflict, and all the ruling responsibilities that went with it, had clearly sharpened her mental focus.

The Amazon ruler added, "I commanded your obedience, Daughter. Do not make me enforce it. You do not want that, believe me."

Furious, and simultaneously ashamed of her fury, Diana dipped her head.

"Yes, my Queen," she forced from between her lips.

Then she turned and sprinted for her room.

* * *

Inside, Diana slumped on the edge of her bed. Her face clutched between her fingers, she muttered, "I am not a child."

In a thousand years, there had never been as urgent a day in the island's history, and she was to be excluded. To "protect her."

Yet she was stronger, faster and more resilient than the other Amazons. She was mightier than any of them…

She _knew_ she could make a difference in an enemy encounter, regardless of what her mother insisted.

At the sound of voices outside, Diana sprang to her feet, and flung open the door.

A company of Amazons was moving through the corridor – off to war without her.

Diana studied the women for a moment. A mix of royal guard and the most elite of Themyscira's fighting force, they were already fully armoured in the Amazonian style, complete with crested helmets.

The princess received smiles and greetings as the warriors passed. She returned each as she scanned over her sisters. Waiting…

"Venelia," Diana called, "would you assist me in donning my armour? I seem to be having some difficulty."

The spearwoman seemed surprised at being singled out.

"Of course, Princess," she blinked. "I simply thought your mother forbid you from fighting."

Word travelled swiftly as always on Themyscira.

Diana grimaced. "She did. This is simply a precaution. For my protection."

"Very well."

Venelia detached herself from the party. There were a few suggestive smirks from her companions as she did so, and an elbow nudge to the ribs Diana could not miss.

The Amazon stepped into the princess's room. She was barely across the threshold when Diana shut the door.

Facing away from the princess, Venelia bent to set her Corinthian helm and weaponry upright against the base of a side table.

Diana moved quickly.

Her arm slipped around the front of Venelia's throat.

The warrior jerked backwards, but it was too late. Diana already had the blade of her other forearm behind the Amazon's neck.

"Please forgive me, Venelia," Diana murmured. "Do not fight. It will be over quicker then."

The woman did resist, of course. Amazons believed in loving submission but that rarely, if ever, applied in combat. Venelia elbowed, stomped, and tugged on Diana's arm with both hands, trying to relieve the simultaneous pressure on windpipe and artery.

However, despite their matched size, she could never equal the princess's strength.

Diana continued to slide her elbows together. A few moments later, Venelia's limbs went limp. She sagged in the princess's arms.

Diana lowered the woman gently to the floor. She worked quickly to unbuckle her breastplate, kilt and greaves. Once her sister was stripped, Diana bound and gagged her with supplies from the chest positioned at the foot of her bed.

"I am sorry," the princess repeated.

She slipped Venelia's armour over her own tunic and strapped it into place. Next, she snatched up the woman's helmet and lowered it onto her head, making sure to tuck in any strands of hair that might betray her. Finally, she took up Venelia's spear, sword and shield.

It disappointed her that she was forced to resort to subterfuge. It tasted like bile burning the back of her tongue.

But if she was not to know romantic love on Themyscira, she could at least know real battle. That was her Goddess-bestowed duty, and it applied whether she was forbidden or not.

Diana slipped from her room and was immediately absorbed into a passing military unit.


	15. Chapter 15

Lara removed her pistol from its holster. She popped out the magazine, and began counting the bullets through the view slit on the side.

Of course she knew how much ammo she had. She'd been through the procedure of assessing her returned combat gear four times in the last hour. But it kept her hands busy, and prevented the tremors from worsening.

She slotted the magazine back into her Remington 1911, reholstered it, and slid her fingers over her belt.

Four spare magazines within reach. Silencer attachment. Tactical knife in its Velcro pouch. Climbing axes dangling at her left hip. And her latest, as yet unchristened toy – a magnetic grapple.

She resisted the urge to count the arrows in her quiver, which was propped up with her compound bow near the entrance.

Still, five start-to-finish equipment checks in 60 minutes.

Lara was aware that she was giving in to her obsessive compulsive tendencies. They always flared up when she was feeling particularly anxious. And right then, she was terrified.

The Amazons were right about her. She was relatively useless in a planned, full-frontal assault. When she found herself in a fight, it was almost always accidental. She stumbled or sneaked into the fray, and then proceeded to improvise her way through it, trying not to think about what she was doing at any specific moment.

That was always for the best. Strategizing wasn't her style at all. Neither was delaying for a battle.

Isolated in a barracks meeting room, with guards at the door, the wait until sunset was driving her barmy. Absolutely the worst thing she could be left alone with just then was her raspy inner monologue. It was toxin-tipped thorns continually scraping against her nerves, and she was stuck with it as her only company.

She clenched her fists in an attempt to squeeze the shakes from them.

It didn't work. All the action did was remind her how clammy her palms were.

"Shit," she hissed.

She hated feeling so out of control.

She _should_ have been used to it, given how fate had flung her about for much of her life. That applied even when she wasn't literally tumbling around mid-shipwreck, plane crash or cliff-side car plummet.

Her reaction to uncertainty was to become rigid and over-controlling in other areas. After Yamatai, her biggest arguments with Sam had been about her obsessiveness. She never deni–

"Lara, hola!"

The Englishwoman looked up.

"Myrene?"

The librarian beamed at her.

"I thought –" Lara stammered.

"– that you were not to speak to anyone?" Myrene smiled. "Fortunately, I am not _anyone_." She practically skipped across the room. As she draped her arms over Lara's shoulders, she murmured, "Besides, Aella owes us."

The archaeologist was so focused on the doorway, and the profile of the guard beyond, that she barely registered Myrene's lips pressing against her own.

The Amazon registered her companion's distraction though.

She cooed as she tucked Lara's fringe behind her ear.

"What is wrong? Do your people not also embrace the spirit of _carpe diem_ in the lead-up to battle?"

Lara's fingertips played over the collar of the Amazon's leather breastplate. She grimaced, "Myrene, what are you doing here?"

The librarian stiffened, and took a step backwards. "Readying to perform my duty."

"But you're not a warrior."

"Not a good one, no," Myrene chortled. "But I am trained, and we go to war. It is an Amazon's responsibility to fight for her sisters and her home. In whatever manner she can. In my case, that will be as an arms bearer, a message carrier, a healer – whatever is required of me."

Before Lara could respond, Myrene cocked her head. "Where is your armour?"

She reached out and ran her palm over the Englishwoman's torso. She lifted the hem of the black cotton polo neck, and rubbed it between her fingers. "This fabric from your world will protect you against bullets?"

"No."

"But – "

Lara brushed her companion's hand away. "I don't wear any armour."

"What?" The librarian paled.

"Amazon armour is useless against Trinity's firepower. It'll just slow me down."

"Not even a helmet?"

"I don't like helmets. They impair my vision."

Myrene's distress concentrated into a scowl. "I see. You would absolve yourself of guilt by deliberately risking death?"

Suddenly it was Sam standing before Lara again.

Irritated at how effectively the image winded her, the archaeologist snapped, "It's nothing like that!"

"This is what you do, is it not?"

"What?"

"Berate others; push them aside into perceived safety while you gamble with your life."

"Trust me, I'll be alright."

Myrene straightened, defiant. "As will I."

The Amazon surged forward, seized Lara's face and kissed her.

Within seconds, the fire of the clinch gutted out. Myrene withdrew.

She trailed the back of her fingers down Lara's cheek. It was a tender gesture, but the softness did not reflect in her expression.

"I wish you good fortune tonight, Lara," she declared.

The librarian turned and strode for the door.

At the threshold she looked back. "Trust that others can fight their own battles, and focus on yourself. Please. I would like for you to survive this."

"Myrene…"

It was too late. And the archaeologist's call was too feeble.

"Shit," she hissed again in the empty room.

* * *

The rubbishness of her day continued. Crouched on the bluff overlooking Medusa's Cove, her theory about Trinity fortifying their camp with mounted machine guns was confirmed.

And it was definitely the powerful secret order that had made its way to the island. Trinity was never shy about stamping its jagged, Y-shaped angel of death emblem on everything the organisation owned. It was visible on several storage trunks stacked as a barricade.

Lara cursed under her breath as she lowered her binoculars.

Alongside her, Artemis mirrored her action with an Amazonian eye glass. Minus the cursing, of course. The extent of the commander's reaction was to clench her brow.

Together, the Amazon and the archaeologist withdrew from the viewpoint and turned to the women gathered at the tree line – Artemis's chosen war band, a handful of other unit leaders, and Hippolyta with her queen's guard.

Behind them fanned out other warriors from the palace as further protection for their ruler.

Artemis announced, "What Lara predicted is true, my queen. Their mechanised weapons point towards the interior."

That triggered a fresh swell of mutterings and strategizing.

Lara wasn't really listening, but she caught the gist of it. Artemis's squad would emerge from the sea like avenging, armoured mermaids, entering the camp from its least well-guarded side. The band would then break apart, and in pairs strike at the five guns simultaneously. Once that threat was cleared, the cavalry was free to storm in across the beach, and eliminate what remained of the enemy.

Lara did what was expected of her. She nodded; made the right assenting noises. But her mind was elsewhere. There was nothing wrong with the Amazons' plan, but she preferred her own.

Lara Croft never did play well with others.

If she could shake free of her watchers, she could slip into the camp alone. Solo, she'd taken out larger groups in the past than Trinity's Themysciran force. At the very least she could thin their numbers and cause a distraction. By drawing their attention, and fire power, she could minimise the loss of Amazonian life – if not avoid it completely.

The problem was sneaking away from her guard. It was proving as impossible as detaching herself from her shadow on a late Summer afternoon.

She scanned over the Amazons spaced in a defensive semi-circle around the meeting. If she could manoeuvre one soldier out of sight, she might have a chance at –

Lara jolted.

Her exclamation was as reflex as grasping for a rock face mid-fall.

"Oh no."


	16. Chapter 16

_Do not flinch, Diana. Do not._

She willed it, and, somehow, her body obeyed.

So she did not react as Lara stared, blinked and stared again.

An initial cry of "Oh no" was the only sound from the little brunette. Otherwise she had been struck mute.

Any moment the attention of the Amazons would switch from the peculiar behaviour of the outsider to the target of her gaze.

The muscles in Diana's thighs tensed in preparation for flight.

It was Lara, though, who started loping for the perimeter of the glade.

"Where do you think you are going?" Hippolyta frowned.

"Uh… nervous stomach." The Englishwoman clutched at her abdomen.

Nearby, Mala snorted. Her look of disgust was shared by the Amazons around her – her usual band of allies and acolytes.

Hippolyta's expression remained untouched by repulsion. Anger, however, was obvious in her features and her posture.

"You know you are not to go unaccompanied," the queen addressed Lara.

"Ugh, fine," the Englishwoman grumbled. She waved her hand towards the loose fence of warriors penning her in.

Diana held her breath; lowered her eyes.

"You!"

The soldiers to either side of the princess shifted their weight from foot to foot, subtly nudging their sister with elbow, hip and shoulder. She was forced to look up, straight into familiar brown irises devoid of their usual melancholy.

"You," Lara barked. "Venelia, is it? Come and witness my humiliation. Give Aella a break for once."

Diana nodded.

Shoulders hunched, she stepped out of formation and into the circle. Dutifully, she followed Lara as the Englishwoman weaved between tree and bush.

They had progressed maybe two dozen paces when the archaeologist spun around.

" _Christ_. Do you enjoy making trouble for me?"

Diana swallowed.

Had she been discovered? Did she try to maintain her disguise and deny Lara? She was not good at this kind of subterfuge.

"I – "

Lara folded her arms. "You're not fooling me, Diana. That helmet is about as effective a disguise as putting on a pair of glasses."

"The others did not see through it."

"You Amazons are too used to honesty and living at face value. Life doesn't work like that off  _Paradise Island_. It's my job to see through to the truth."

Gingerly, Diana removed her helm. "Will you betray me?" she gulped.

"I damn well should. I'm not happy you're here, Princess. But there's nothing I can do about it." Lara sighed. "And I imagine I'll be blamed for it. You  _will_  get me executed at some point, you know?"

"I have never intended that."

Lara reclined against a tree trunk. "And what do you intend right now?"

The princess hesitated. For too long, evidently. The archaeologist's eyes narrowed. She hissed, "Diana, no."

Lara's disapproval reminded the Amazon too much of her mother. And memory bloated the blister of frustration already chafing her.

"Diana,  _YES_!" the young woman exploded. "Was I supposed to sit idle?"

"Quite right."

Diana shook her head vehemently. "You are exactly like my mother. Locking me away under the guise of protection."

"I'm rather tired of people saying that to me today, actually."

"You act like you know what is best for me."

"Act?" Lara arched an eyebrow. "I don't see eye to eye with your mother, but I agree with her here. This isn't a game, Diana. For your own well-being, just be an obedient daughter – and an Amazon – and submit for once. Please."

"You of  _all_ people are encouraging me to obey a ruling I do not agree with? Even at this very moment?"

Lara stiffened. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I have been watching you. Closely." Diana lowered her voice. "Whatever you are plotting, do not do it."

Lara uncrossed her arms, and pushed herself upright. "I really wish you would turn that bloody thing off for once; that perceptive thing you do."

Diana knew she had prodded a nerve. The Englishwoman was starting to fidget again, and emotionally wall herself away.

The princess drew herself up to her full height. Looming over Lara, she murmured, "I will stop you. For  _your_ well-being."

"Really?" The archaeologist lifted her chin to look Diana straight in the face.

"Yes."

"How about I yell right now? Let your mother know you're here."

"Perhaps at the same time I can explain how you encouraged me? How my disobedience is a result of your manipulation… Seduction even."

Diana had manoeuvred them into a stalemate, she realised. But judging by Lara's expression, her final words had been too much.

If there was one thing she had learnt about the Englishwoman in their weeks together, it was that she loathed feeling trapped. When that happened she went rabid, her frustration mutating into a fury that prevented her from seeing sense. At the same time her temper blinded her, it also made her a completely unpredictable opponent.

Dangerous.

Diana wished that she could erase what she had said. She was on the point of apologising – giving up her position in the argument – when Lara shouldered past her.

"Don't get in my way, Diana. Don't get in anyone's way."

Lara's manner was like an icy blast. It set the princess physically shivering.

Then again, the chill could have been entirely of her own creation. Stemming from fear that she was losing her friend.

_No. That could not be._

She turned, remorse already dampening her lips.

Lara was at the edge of the clearing.

Legs set in a wide, solid base, she stood waiting for the princess. Her face was ominously blank.

"Lar–"

An instant later, an axe hurtled towards Diana's head.

As she raised her bracelets in defence, one word echoed within her skull.

_Traitor._

Her mother had been right about Lara all along. Like everyone from Man's World, she gave in too easily to dark urges.

Behind her forearms, Diana braced for impact. She closed her eyes.

She opened them again when she heard the strangest sound behind her: a cry pitched lower than any she was familiar with.

She spun around as a figure stumbled, and then crashed, through the bush.

It was no beast, or woman. Even dressed from throat to foot in black, she could see how square, hard and clumsy its body was.

A man. An actual man.

He lay on his side, groaning as he groped at the metal axe handle jutting from his flesh. It was wedged high on his chest, where the pectoral muscle met his right shoulder.

In that position, depending on how far the axe head had penetrated, there would be nerve damage. Certainly he did not seem to be having much success moving his right arm with any control. He had already given up on reaching the axe with it. Instead, he let his hand drop to his side.

"Puh – Pleeassee." He locked eyes with Diana.

Such a piteous creature. Not at all what she expected of her first encounter with the species that had once enslaved her sisters.

As the princess took her first step towards him, the man's gaze flitted past her.

He paled. "No. Not her. Not –"

A noise like someone expelling a grape pip. The man's head snapped back, taking his body in the same direction. He landed limp and silent in the dirt.

Immediately, blood began to ooze across his forehead from a puncture above his left eye.

Lara stepped into the periphery of the princess's vision. Grim-faced, she still held her pistol outstretched.

"Why did you do that?" Diana gasped.

Lara refused to look at her companion. Instead, she retrieved the man's dropped rifle by its strap, and draped the weapon across her body. As she unscrewed a black cylinder from the end of her own gun, she growled, "Survival Smarts 101: Never trust them."

"He was begging for help."

"Mmmm."

The archaeologist sank onto her haunches next to the man. Using both hands, she tugged her axe free. It took some effort. By the time she had pried it from the corpse, her palms were smeared red.

For a moment she stared at the blood, and her expression softened.

It did not last.

Lara's face hardened once more into a scowl as she forced her fingers into fists.

"He sought mercy," Diana murmured. "You did not have to kill him. We could have listened and learned from what he had to say."

"Is that so?"

Lara rolled the body onto its front. With his back exposed, Diana could see the man's right hand already cupping the handle of his gun.

A bubble of nausea surged up the princess's throat.

"Your mother is right. You can't  _ever_  trust them, Diana."

Finally Lara was looking at her again. Not with rage, but with threadbare remorse. Hers was the pity of a parent who had failed to shield their child from inevitable pain despite their best efforts.

"I – I cannot live like that," the princess responded.

"Then you will die like that."

Lara got to her feet. While she wiped her palms on her trousers, Amazons bounded into the clearing.

Confusion and horror charged the atmosphere; tangibly, like the air after a lightning strike.

Weapons were pointed at the archaeologist, but nobody felt confident enough to seize her given the complicating presence of a man's corpse.

Hippolyta appeared.

Even she gaped at the scene.

"Daughter?" she ventured once she had readjusted her ruler's cloak of emotional detachment.

What was there for Diana to do? She had been unmasked. She dipped her head in deference, no matter whether steel awaited the back of her neck or not.

"Mother."

The queen had yet to rebuild her temper. "What happened here?" she asked plainly.

"Lara…" By Hera, Diana felt awful for believing ill of her friend. "She saved me, Mother."

Both Amazon princess and queen looked to the archaeologist.

There was no satisfaction there. No smug vindication.

Lara shrugged and nudged the body with her boot. "From one of Trinity's scouts, evidently. We were lucky this one was on his own. There will be others."

A crackle came from the man's vest, followed by a beep and a tinny male voice. "Report…"

Lara bent and scooped a square communicating device from the corpse. She held it up as the crackling continued.

"Jenks, come in... Jenks, do you copy?"

The archaeologist's grimace intensified the longer she listened. She turned to the queen, and Artemis stationed at her right side. "We need to strike now."


	17. Chapter 17

Poetry in motion.

It was a cliché but there was no better way to describe the Amazon fighting force.

Their combat style was verse as opposed to prose; elegant and exquisite even as it devastated with its efficiency.

A death dance built on a foundation of lunges, twirls and leaps. No wonder they wore such short tunics and pteruges.

There were times Lara caught herself stupidly paused, staring slack-jawed.  _Never_  had she seen anything like it.

She imagined college-era Sam elbowing her in ribs and grinning, "It's a good thing you're already wet from your swim."

The archaeologist had witnessed the warriors training, of course, but there they always held themselves back in some slight way, out of respect for their sparring partners. On the beach, within Trinity's encampment, there were no self-imposed limits.

And this was simply Artemis's advance squad, moving in silence from the tide line towards their objective: the mounted machine guns.

Lara preferred to work alone – that had been her plan for this encounter – but what a difference it made having disciplined fighters at her side. To think she had worried about keeping them out of harm's way. They made her look as clumsy as a toddler bundled up for a mid-Winter outing.

She couldn't keep up with the Amazons, but she still did her bit, slitting the throat of a Trinity operative when he passed her hiding place.

Lara never relished killing. Even when she went on a rage bender, she inevitably suffered a Heraklean guilt hangover the next day. That evening, every time she took a life she thought of Diana's horrified expression in the forest. She never meant for the princess to see the Tomb Raider in ruthless, blood-smeared action. It was like Sam all over again.

How could Diana ever look at the Englishwoman with kindness again?

Lara felt wretched.

Her only consolation was that the young Amazon was revealed, and safely with her mother – absolving Lara of worry for her well-being. As it was too late to escort the princess back to the palace before the battle, Diana had been absorbed into Hippolyta's war party.

That elite band hung back with the rest of the Amazon army, at the point where bush met beach. They waited for the signal.

It came in the form of clangs and howls. In unison, Artemis and her chosen few reached the guns. Swords came down, shattering barrels and dislodging ammo cases. Bullets disgorged from boxes like intestines from a vicious belly cut.

One final cry from Artemis and Phase One of the operation was complete.

Squad members wielding shields, crouched beneath them. Lara dived for cover behind a six-foot stack of crates.

Arrows rained on the camp in two downpours. The first whistled in the darkness. The second brought fire, and much needed illumination.

Shrieks around the camp suggested the archers had done their job: dispatching the first men to respond to the attack. Further thinning the zealot herd.

A few seconds of silence followed the shower.

Already the Amazons were on their feet. Lara stayed where she was, listening as the camp came to life. Where the fire arrows found fertile ground, dots of flame acted like tea lights. She should have been grateful for them, but they impaired her night vision. With eyes turned wonky, she was forced to rely on her ears.

Men's groans and yells.

Feet scuffling through sand.

Warriors' yips and bellows, like wolf and she-bear were working in harmony.

The clatter of modern weaponry, and the occasional clank of old.

The thud of a body colliding with loose earth.

A rumbling that she felt as much as heard.

Lara squinted around the wall of crates. The Amazon cavalry galloped across the beach in a bull horn formation. Hippolyta was at its centre, cloak billowing, sword pointed forward.

Lara started chuckling.

Her childhood was saturated with bedtime stories lifted from myth and legend. The Trojan War was one of the chief sources her father drew on. He would wave his hands about, recounting the bittersweet battle between Achilles and the Amazons. Richard Croft was especially animate as he told that tale. While a wide-eyed little girl lay with the covers clenched up under her chin, he laboured to create vivid images of the warrior women on horseback. How they out-shone Mankind's armies with their magnificence.

_Dad, if only you could see this now._

Lara watched the advance for a few seconds more. Then she hefted her new assault rifle, and shifted into a crouch.

Artemis's earlier assessment was true. The Englishwoman wasn't made for frontal assault. With the battle in full swing, she darted between cover, making kills as men crossed her path.

She was an opportunistic predator who'd spent so much time in exile from the pack that she didn't know any other way to hunt.

At some point Lara found herself facing a Trinity operative who'd just lumbered out of a tent.

They looked at each other across a space of twenty feet.

He gaped at the sight of her. But instead of a weapon, he groped for the communicator on his vest.

"Croft. Lara Croft is here," he barked into it.

What did  _that_ mean? They knew she was on the island. And who the _hell_  was he talking to?

The archaeologist charged forward.

Just before she reached him, two arrows thumped into the man's chest. He crumpled into her, his weight dragging her to her knees.

Teeth gritted, Lara managed to shove the soldier onto his side. Once she was free of his bulk, she groped for the comms device. She hastily squeezed the push-to-talk button.

_Christ, what was she doing?_

That old inner monologue answered.  _Improvise._

She lowered her voice. "Come in."

Crackling.

She tried again. "Copy?"

A wave of white passed over her eyes, as if a flag had slapped her face.

At the same time, it felt like someone had struck a match against her deltoid. She dropped the communicator and clutched at the ball of her shoulder. Her fingers slipped over torn fabric, slick heat, and a groove in her flesh that shouldn't have been there.

Her vision cleared. Well, enough to make out a Trinity goon several feet away.

_Shite._

He re-aimed his rifle.

Then he seemed to judder. His arms flopped, taking the gun with them. He tottered a step to either side, before his balance failed and he dropped face down.

A throwing axe jutted from his spine.

A heartbeat later, the axe's owner strode forward from the gloom and tugged it free.

Mala.

She gave the Englishwoman a cheerful mock salute and scampered on.

Of all the people Lara would owe a life debt, she never expected the blonde. Still, she'd take it. It didn't happen often – the curse of her accurate instincts – but she could accept being wrong on occasion.

* * *

The encounter was over quickly.

The Amazons had Trinity surrounded, and the women fought to exterminate. A couple of wounded soldiers were trussed up for questioning, but for the most part the warrior women stuck to their pledge that no man should step on Themyscira and live.

The executions were swift and detached. Whether there was a revenge component, Lara couldn't tell. In the muddle of night combat, she was unsure if any Amazons had fallen. She just knew she wasn't the only rifle-wielder to get off a shot or two.

The thought troubled her, especially as there was no sign of Myrene. But before her imagination could scamper too far into the realm of dark speculation, the rational part of her mind piped up. Not every Amazon took up arms in the battle, and the librarian's role was auxiliary.

Still, something was grating Lara. It slithered up from her gut, and scratched over her skin like a crone's fingernail. She wanted to dismiss the sensation as the after-effect of the fight; too much adrenalin hot-wiring her already heightened senses.

As she glanced around, though, she became certain she wasn't the only one to feel it.

_Something was wrong._

The majority of Amazons who'd completed their tasks looked relieved. They shared smiles, embraces and water skins. Some wiped off their swords or stretched muscles. However, their celebrations remained hushed.

Hippolyta and Artemis stood side-by-side, impassive as Trinity bodies were laid out on the beach. Torches had been plunged into the sand, providing more than enough light for the counting.

Diana listened to the commanders' murmured conversation. There was no indication she'd been blooded or bloodied in combat – her armour and weapons appeared pristine. Lara could be grateful for that, even if it stung that the princess never looked in her direction.

Of all the Amazons, it was Mala who most closely reflected Lara's agitation. She paced along the rows of corpses, back and forth like a penned lioness at feeding time. She scowled and swung an axe about, evidently irritated that the battle had ended too soon for her liking.

Once all the bodies had been collected, Lara's nebulous fears condensed into a solid form. She sucked in a breath.

Mala noticed the archaeologist's reaction. She growled, "What?"

"This isn't right."

"What do you mean?"

Artemis answered for the Englishwoman. "There are too few of them, given our estimate."

Twenty-eight men. Not fifty. No wonder it was done with so quickly.

Mala shrugged, "So where are the others?"

The response was distant gunfire.


	18. Chapter 18

Diana knew.

So did the other Amazons, of course. No words needed to be spoken.

At the sound of gunfire, they sprinted for their mounts.

Diana lingered a moment longer than her sisters.

Throughout the encounter, she had been to her mother's rear, flanked by members of the queen's guard. It made her feel more like their prisoner than their princess.

That left her with a peculiar emptiness in her chest; a sensation of heart-breaking disappointment.

She was permitted to take part in the charge across the beach, but otherwise remained completely shielded as Man and Amazon clashed. She knew with certainty that the warriors around her would sacrifice their lives before a Trinity soldier got within five strides of her.

There had not been a single chance to swing her sword.

Yet again she was denied the opportunity to be who she  _knew_ she was meant to be.

But as the new crisis developed – blooming like a battle wound through linen – she was finally forgotten.

The same was true for Lara.

The adventurer swung her head from side to side as the Amazons sprinted past her. Her lips parted. Her chest swelled. But her question was crushed into the sand during the Themyscirans' departure.

In the end, Lara's only audible exhalation was a sharp, dejected "Shit."

Diana knew too well what it was like to be left out by her people.

The similarity united the two women, and in that instant it brought their gazes together.

The princess retrieved the trampled, unsaid question, dusted it off and answered.

"Doom's Doorway."

Her words had the same effect as a starter signal.

Lara ran for a nearby cluster of horses. Not every Amazon had left. The animals waited obediently while their riders continued to secure the beach. Lara grabbed the bridle of the closest beast, and tugged down on it, using the tautness like a pole to vault her onto the saddle.

Her landing drove her heels into the dark bay's sides, and it took off at a gallop. In the same direction as the queen and the other Amazons.

Diana darted for Clete, her mount.

Lara Croft was an able horsewoman, but she was disadvantaged riding a beast unfamiliar with her command. Diana drew alongside the archaeologist before they even cleared the beach.

"Lara, you cannot catch them."

The Englishwoman's gaze remained set on the horizon. The tendons in her neck stood out as if they were cable right under her skin. "It doesn't matter. I have to try. I  _can't_ let this happen; none of it."

"It is futile."

"An Amazon telling me to give up? To accept something unacceptable?"

"In your obstinacy, you only heard _part_  of what I said. As usual."

The Englishwoman's head snapped in the princess's direction.

_Such anguish in her eyes._

Diana swallowed. "Come with me."

"What?"

"You cannot outrun my people. But there is something else you –  _we_  – can do."

Lara's expression reflected her softening conviction. Her pupils darted between Diana and the path ahead; then back again. Her response was a grimaced nod.

* * *

Diana steered them west, inland through the forest.

It was not a well-travelled route, and the lack of a path meant slowing their pace to a canter at best. Given the poor illumination, Diana would not risk breaking Clete's leg over a shadowed root or hidden ditch. Neither did she want her own forehead to collide with a camouflaged branch.

The longer the journey took, though, the more she could sense Lara's building agitation. Any moment, Diana expected her companion to abandon the plan and bolt blindly in her original intended direction, whether it got her killed or not.

So the princess attempted a distraction.

"Lara, you bleed."

Little moonlight penetrated the forest canopy, but enough caught the Englishwoman's clothed left bicep. It glistened ominously, like oil the Amazons kept stored in casks for their fire arrows.

The wound must have felt as if it were flame-touched too. Yet, Lara simply blinked at it.

"Oh."

She grabbed at her stained sleeve, and ripped it off at the shoulder. She did not ask for Diana's help. Working one-handed, she bound the strip of fabric over her injury, and tightened it with her teeth. She never flinched.

A short while later, gunfire echoed again.

Lara tensed. She muttered, "Diana, as much as I'm enjoying this outride…"

"I promise we are almost there."

They were. The incline steepened. Diana could already feel Clete taking strain beneath her. Soon they would be forced to abandon their mounts. She dreaded the mortal's reluctance; she expected an argument.

At the same time, troubling thoughts had started to gnaw on the princess. What were they riding towards? What kind of foe would sacrifice dozens of their own people for the sake of diversion? Was Man so devoid of conscience?

Clete snorted and struck stiff-limbed at the earth. She would not progress further.

"What is it?" Lara asked.

"We walk from here."

The archaeologist's fists tightened on her reins. Her jaw clenched. For an instant it seemed like she would flee.

Then she slipped from her saddle.

"I'm trusting you, Princess."

"I know."

Diana dismounted. She kissed Clete on the muzzle. "Home, girl."

Lara's horse followed.

From this point it would be faster for the women on foot, but there was another reason to proceed without their mounts. Horses became skittish when faced with the oddity of what lay ahead.

Diana felt the need to explain as they climbed towards the highest glade on the island.

"They will be here. They always are this time of day."

"Who?"

The Amazon kept her voice lowered. "They are highly independent and even more reclusive. My people respect that, although I think my mother wishes they were more inclined to work with us."

The cryptic comments had their intended effect on Lara. The Englishwoman's scowl redirected inwards as she attempted to solve the puzzle before they reached their destination.

On the edge of the clearing, Lara finally understood. All frustration melted from her demeanour. She had been on Themyscira long enough to lose much of her sense of wonder, but in that instant astonishment struck fresh again. She gaped.

Diana squeezed the brunette's shoulder. "Let me approach first. They have known me since I was a little girl. Stay to my rear and keep your weapons sheathed."

As Diana stepped into the dell, the matriarch lifted her head.

The rest of her kin, either grazing or dozing, followed suit.

Diana extended her hand, palm up. "My apologies for the intrusion, but we desperately need your help."

Hooves stamped.

Wings unfurled.


	19. Chapter 19

In just six years, she had become intimately acquainted with the impossible. In theory, the exposure should have vaccinated her. She should have been immune to awe. Yet, that never was the case. As with doubt, every time she experienced mouth-gaping wonder, it felt as potent as the first.

And every single time, her rational mind still rummaged for reasons to discredit it. Even if she saw things with her own eyes, touched them with her fingertips, tasted, smelt and heard, a part of her always strained with insistence that it wasn't real.

So in that moment, she felt feverish; her brain overheated as she tried to process her ludicrous situation.

She sat astride a flying horse – Pegasus essentially – with her arms around the waist of an Amazon princess apparently born from clay, goddess blessing and mother's love.

Earlier, Lara had watched said princess talk to a whole herd of winged steeds. Or, rather, she guessed Diana was speaking to them. The Amazon didn't use words exactly; she silently radiated something Lara could only describe as concentrated empathy. To the Englishwoman it was tangible, and irresistible – like crossing a cottage threshold on a bitter Winter night, and forgetting the sting in your flesh as you move towards the blazing hearth. The horses felt it too, evidently. One was evidently selected by their matriarch to serve as the women's mount. All so that they could swoop into a battle with the fate of the Earth at stake.

Again, completely ridiculous.

Lara was all too aware that the only way she would survive the upcoming encounter was if she surrendered to her instincts – let them run the show. Thought would kill her, especially if it was tangled in distracting disbelief.

* * *

As much as the archaeologist had resisted the plan, it turned out Diana was right. Their detour, as counterproductive as it seemed at first, saved them time in the end. Literally moving as the crow flies, they cleared forest and mountain, disdainful of the need for paths. In minutes they crested the last ridge, and were poised over the ravine that separated Doom's Doorway – the entrance to Tartarus – from the rest of Themyscira.

Diana stiffened inside Lara's arms.

"Suffering Sappho!"

The fight was already underway. And this one was no walkover for the Amazons. A handful of female forms sprawled face down on and before the bridge.

_Your fault_ , the usual internal rasp reminded Lara. She winced.

Trinity had advanced partway along the chasm crossing. Several operatives were trying to push on toward the Door, where an equal number of Amazon guard stood their ground. Arrows replied to bullets, and vice versa, as the sides alternated heartbeat-long emergence from cover. Two operatives, and one valiant but misguided Amazon, lay limp in the no man's land between the two groups.

It was a face-on struggle of patience and resources; one Lara recognised as completely unsuitable for her temperament and combat style.

More pressing, more ferocious, was the fighting to Trinity's rear. The men had brought barricades with them in the form of ammo crates. The shields protected them from the Amazons' fury, which had been bottlenecked by the narrowness of the bridge. The deck would only accommodate three bodies, advancing shoulder-to-shoulder. That was it.

It was a precarious position for the outsiders, but a defendable one. They crouched behind the crates, their rifles and God-knows-what-else ready and waiting for the warrior women.

Still mounted, Hippolyta, Artemis and the others jostled at the edge of the bridge. Artemis's face was twisted with anger and anguish. She wanted to gallop on, but her queen kept their forces back. Hippolyta held her sword arm out, perpendicular to her body, blocking her people. The only things she permitted were volleys of arrows and javelins.

Still, not every Amazon was stuck in the stalemate. Some attempted to clamber along the side of the bridge to bypass the barricades, or strike at critical architectural supports from beneath. Trinity troops took pot shots at them.

Lara and Diana's vantage point provided a view of the entire battle.

They saw three of the climbers penned in on a ledge, their shields raised. A Trinity operative made the same observation.

Lara watched him pluck a grenade from his vest.

Again, the hiss.  _Your fault._

"Diana, lower!" the archaeologist yelled.

The princess obeyed.

They arced towards the bridge. As their speed increased, and their angle of descent steepened, the negative g-force seized Lara and started dragged her backwards. Her grip on Diana slipped. There was just no time to stabilise herself. Hoping one hand was enough to hold her in place, with the other she tugged out her pistol.

Shouts in male and female voices. Upturned faces. Lara and Diana's surprise advantage was gone.

Bullets cracked.

Diana swerved in defence, jerking the pair and their mount sideways.

The motion was disorientating.

Laura continued to slide. But it didn't matter. It never mattered. She refocused on her target.

The soldier pulled his grenade pin.

Exactly what she waited for. Lara exhaled, counted out three pulse throbs, and squeezed her trigger.

The man dropped, bomb still in his palm.

Operatives yelped and bounded from their improvised dugout. Only a couple though. The majority remained crouched, firing at either the Amazons or their aerial attackers.

The blast, seconds later, splintered wood, bone and weapons. Even better, it triggered a chain reaction of similarly scaled explosions. The crates clearly weren't empty.

As the detonations started, Diana yanked them out of range, and circled them around the chaos.

She may have claimed to hate violence but just then Lara knew she was smiling. Vindictive gratification trickled down her gullet like the day's first cup of Earl Grey.

Few things felt better than watching those bastards suffer.

She was still grinning when a familiar figure dashed from the self-destructing barricades to the next row of crates.

The archaeologist's smile crumpled. "Oh no."

"What is it?" Diana asked.

"Faro, shite!"

The Amazon princess glanced over her shoulder. "Who is Faro?"

"Trinity's version of me."

Actually, that wasn't quite true. Lara believed the woman was better than her – younger, sleeker, stronger, and far more cunning. Most troubling of all was her ruthlessness.

Lara swallowed. "Trinity tried to recruit me. I… didn't mince words with my refusal, so they turned to Faro."

In their quest for new blood, the fanatics couldn't have made a better find than the 22-year-old Nigerian. It used to be that Trinity relied on Lara to do their legwork for them; shadowing her, stealing from her. With Faro, that changed.

In that instant, the Trinity operative looked up. Her wide-eyed surprise mirrored Lara's own.

"Croft?!" The word didn't reach Lara over the blasts, but Faro's lips were easy enough to read.

One millisecond later, a pistol was in Faro's palms.

One second after that, Diana flung her arm across Lara's body. A bullet sparked against the Amazon's bracelet and bounced off.

"Uh, thanks," Lara said as the airborne women matched frowns.

Attempted assassination or not, the moment provided Faro with the diversion she needed. She was back behind cover, shielded by a wall of boxes further down the crossing.

"What now?" Diana asked.

Artemis and some of her elite had started to advance, cautiously, with shields raised against bullets and flying shrapnel. At the site of Lara's sabotage, a chunk of flaming deck fell away. That would slow the women further.

The reprieve allowed Trinity to refocus their efforts on reaching the Door. Lara saw one man shoulder an RPG.

"There!" she barked, pointing at the soldier. "Get us there."

The women's mount gave two powerful beats of its wings. They jerked upwards in a staccato double motion. And then they plunged, like the initial dive of a rollercoaster.

Lara had been in dozens of vehicular plummets, and flung herself over bottomless nothingness enough times to lose count, but the motion never failed to steal her sense of orientation. The world turned off-kilter.

Despite the temptation to clench them shut, she kept her eyes on the warhead-wielder.

The women closed the gap between them and the man in less than five seconds.

"What –?" Diana started.

She didn't finish.

Lara released her grip on the princess. She tilted sideways in a clumsy dismount, just clearing her shin of the horse's back.

Then she dropped, feet-first.

"Lara!"

Diana grabbed at her. The swipe breezed over Lara's exposed forearm, but missed.

The archaeologist landed between the two Trinity barricades. Even with a roll to lessen the impact, she hit the wooden surface too hard. Her knees slammed into the base of her ribs, winding her. Even worse, her limbs jellified.

She didn't have the control she needed to wield a gun. All she had was her body; her larger, more resilient and reliable muscle groups. She pushed herself upright, and charged.

Trinity operatives reached for her. Some shot at her. In response, she dodged and shoved, still trying to build speed.

She was never into team sports, but she supposed she would have made a halfway decent scrum-half.

Somehow, during the sprint, she got her combat knife into her palm. So when she collided with the RPG-carrier from behind, carbon slid easily into flesh, straight through his vest. Right where kidney would be. The man howled, arched – and squeezed the launch trigger.

"No!"

Lara snatched at the tube.

It was too late.

With chilling impotence, Lara watched as the warhead struck Doom's Doorway. Her collision had altered its trajectory slightly, causing the rocket to strike off-centre, but the devastation caused was the same.

The handful of Amazons acting as a final line of defence were flung like a tantrum-flipped tub of dolls. Rock fragments sprayed. As the pieces blasted free, they dislodged bigger lumps of stone that had long walled off the Door. The result was a mini-landslide as the centuries' old collapse gave way. That ancient layer of protection was gone.

Rubble rolled and bounced onto the bridge. Lara staggered as she tried to maintain her balance. It was a wasted effort. The shaking was nothing compared to the shockwave that reverberated from the explosion. It smacked her to the ground like a full-force double-leg takedown.

Winded again.

She really fucking hated grenades.

There were a few moments where Lara didn't remember anything. The first sensations that returned to her were the taste and smell of dust, underscored by notes of copper. Her eyes weren't working properly; neither were her ears. The sideways world was muffled and blurred as if, somehow, she had wormed her way inside a Zorb.

Her left cheek throbbed. Her lungs were full of something heavy and suffocating. When she coughed, the pain was worse. All she wanted was to continue lying there, but she knew what was coming.

_Get up._

Roth's voice. Always Roth's voice in such instances.

_Lara, girl, get up._

Arms quivering, she obeyed. She got herself upright and didn't understand why the world was suddenly desaturated. She turned, still trying to make sense of her situation.

Fire lanced her just above her right hip.

She clutched at the spot and her fingers came away crimson. The only colour in existence.

She dropped to her knees.

The rich red continued to hypnotise her. She was still staring when a boot to her jaw brought back clarity.

Lara sprawled face up. While she lay there, colour and sound seeped back into the world.

Anarchy.

Fish had water. African lions had the plains of the savannah. Lara Croft had collapsing, blazing bridges and buildings. Her warped element.

Groggy, still mostly disconnected from reality, Lara pushed herself onto her elbows.

Faro was glaring at her. "What are  _you_  doing here?"

"You – you should know. You followed me."

The Trinity agent blinked. "Always so arrogant."

"Maybe," Lara grinned. Her neck was struggling to support her fifty pound skull, but she forced her head up. She wanted to see Faro's reaction when she added, "But I don't have to maim a concussed opponent to claim an advantage."

The younger woman's nostrils flared.

_Small pleasures in the twilight of life._

"I don't know how you got here," Faro hissed, "or really care. But thank you."

She raised her rifle. "This moment will be worth every migraine you've ever given me."

Lara sucked in a breath, steeling herself.

Faro was there.

And then she wasn't.

She didn't yelp or make any sound as the ammo crate struck her. The box flew across the bridge as a black blur, like a Fury had swooped in out of nowhere. It took Faro with it, before crunching into the timber parapet.

Diana stood further down the deck.

_Oh, FFS._

"Diana, get out of here!"

The princess called back cheerfully, "Because you are so in control of the situation."

"Listen to me. Before you get – "

A soldier sprang up behind the Amazon and rammed his rifle butt into her crown.

Diana's skull lolled forward like a bobblehead, then sprang back.

She turned, seized the man by his shirt with one arm, and launched him into the abyss. He shrieked the whole way down.

"You were saying?" Smirking, Diana rubbed the spot where she'd been struck. Lara noted she carried no shield; just a sword on her hip.

Cocky. Foolish. Clearly she'd spent too much time with the archaeologist.

Behind the women, the battle was turning. Amazons howled and ululated as they reached Trinity's front line. The men fought back, but hand-to-hand they were no match for the warriors with their thrusting spears and blades. Faro, their commander, was down. Diana and Lara were to their rear. The battle and its explosions had thinned their numbers. It was essentially over.

Fanatics, though...

As Diana trotted towards to the melee, a Trinity operative popped up from behind the nearest barricade. He trained his M4 on the princess.

Diana in her barely-there ancient armour, targeted with a modern assault rifle, was bad enough. But Lara noticed the man's support hand – it cupped a second, larger barrel mounted beneath the weapon's primary one.

The Englishwoman was far too familiar with the deceptively soft sound that tube made as it discharged. She knew what followed. Enhanced reflexes or not, there was no deflecting it.

Lara flung herself forward with a yell. Momentum got her onto one leg, but it buckled as a wave of molten heat flooded over her right thigh.

She sprawled useless on the bridge. "Dian – !"

She raised her head.

The Englishwoman caught the last milliseconds of Diana frowning at her. Then the princess turned towards the acknowledged threat. Her arms came up as the operative fired. Her bracers slammed together.

Weirdly, there was no earth-shuddering boom. Just bright golden light. And a concussive surge that felt more like being sucked under by a tsunami than being sucker-punched by a grenade blast. Lara was lifted four feet in the air, flipped and launched backwards.

Elsewhere on the bridge, men, women and objects were airborne, tumbling in all directions.

_What was happening?_

That was the Englishwoman's last lucid thought before she slammed into a sliding crate, forehead-first. After that, she just let herself be pushed along the deck with the crate. The motion was as impossible to resist as a tide, so she didn't bother. It was far too much effort.

Even with her eyelids closed, the golden light seeped through.

Eventually, it stopped. The illumination faded. Lara remained with her cheek and ear pressed to the cool wooden slats of the bridge.

Boots pounded in her direction. A clumsy uneven stride.

The archaeologist opened her eyes as a Trinity operative lumbered within ten strides. Her body stiffened in reflex defence; her fingers clawing for the nearest weapon. Not even a handy chunk of stone.

The man didn't look in her direction. The pupils in his filthy, camo-painted face stayed fixed ahead. He was a mercenary zombie, bleary and cumbersome in every way except for his objective.

Lara didn't consider herself particularly compos mentis in that instant either. However, something prickled along the back of her neck, piercing through all the layers of pain. Instinct, turned Morse code, rapped out frantically.

_What… Is… He… Doing?_

The operative didn't carry a weapon. No assault rifle, no RPG, not even a pistol. His left arm hung at his side. His right, though, clutched at a belt around his neck.

As he staggered past her, Lara rolled onto her stomach.

His proximity allowed her to process what was strung on that peculiar necklace: a half-dozen grenades.

How he was framed by the scene ahead – well, that clarified his purpose. Far more of Doom's Doorway stood exposed. Despite Lara's earlier efforts, the rocket launcher had still cleared most of the boulders covering its front. The forearm-thick chains that once acted as an extra layer of restraint, lay limp as dead pythons before the entrance slab.

Even without the Amazon guard there to protect it, there was no way the operative could push the Door open. Then again, that wasn't his plan.

Trinity and their goons weren't smart. But they never lacked zeal.

Lara drew her knees up under her body. It shouldn't have been so difficult, but the effort turned her breathless and trembly. Sitting on her shins, she had to pause until the hundreds of shimmery midges in the corners of her vision settled back down into their murky beds.

She swallowed.

_Keep it together, Lara._

The lumbering operative was being delayed by debris and bodies obstructing his path. Good. It bought her time.

She glanced back along the bridge. Here and there a figure was slowly righting itself in a haze of dust and smoke. She couldn't make out ally from enemy – they were all too far away.

As for Diana, there was nothing. No sign. That wonderful golden-hearted girl was gone.

Lara had been pierced, shot, dragged bare-skinned over gravel, clawed, even seared. Every one of those had squeezed tears and cries from her at some point. But the pain from those wounds never ground as deeply and persistently into her nerve clusters as it did from loss.

_Diana…_

Somehow the Tomb Raider got upright, teetering on her heels. Everything was in vignette mode again, like an Instagram filter had been dropped over the entirety of existence.

So her eyes weren't working properly. That was alright. They were less important than her legs. She dared a step. Worryingly, her knee only locked at the last moment. Every muscle in her body was clenched to awkward stiffness.

That only left her with her fury. Her last resource for one final surge of effort.

She lifted her boot and let it drop two feet ahead of her. When she was certain it would support her weight, she swung through the other leg. It was like being in physical rehab, but without railings to clutch at. As usual, she had to succeed on her own, or fall.

It felt frustratingly slow, but the momentum did build. With pace, she no longer had to think about her movements. The rust flaked off and her legs pistoned, propelling her forward.

The Trinity operative glanced over his shoulder. His pale-faced double-take was comical. His burst of speed wasn't.

The race was on.

Neither of them was elegant. He struggled to clear rubble, while Lara repeatedly stumbled or knocked knees in milliseconds of lost coordination. Once, she almost tumbled straight through a hole in the deck. She was generally more nimble though, and the gap narrowed between man and woman.

As the mercenary reached the anchorage at the far side of the bridge, his limp arm shot up to his chest and started tugged frantically. A half dozen pins dropped to the stone under his feet. With his right arm, he made the sign of the cross.

_No, you don't, you bastard._

Lara hurdled an upended crate.

There was only one option still available to her. Her fingers tightened around the climbing axe that swung from her belt, just behind her left hip. For over half a decade the axe had been her last resort. Her trusty "In Case of Fire Break Glass" implement. So it would be again. She had to be sure.

Switching the weapon to her stronger right hand, she leapt again, erasing the distance between herself and the zealot.

Of course he was expecting her. He just probably wasn't expecting her course of action.

She sank the axe head deep into his pectoral muscle as he turned towards her. His flak jacket caught most of the blow, so his expression was less pain and more surprise.

After all, who ran  _towards_  a bomb as the countdown zeroed?

Lara kept her gaze steady. It was like a lion encounter – locked eyes, slow movements, no visible fear.

She had to be certain…

She readjusted her grip on the axe handle. Swallowed.

All clumsiness flushed from her system, the parts of her body worked together in a single smooth motion: free hand to enemy collar, tighten grip, pull, spin to the right, arch sideways, and step for good measure.

Together, archaeologist and soldier slipped over the lip of the ledge.

Never in a million years would Lara Croft call herself a hero. The label was usually slapped on her exploits by others. To her it was more about fixing her many,  _many_  mistakes, and most efforts felt like applying a plaster to a splintering dam wall. It was cosmic justice that she should die rectifying one of her greatest blunders.

Robbed of his moment of glory, the operative was pure self-destructive spite. He clung to Lara, squashing the handful of lumpy grenades to her breast. The first thing they blew out would be the contents of her ribcage.

She had expected to feel a kind of acceptance in such a moment; relief that she was done. The reality was quite different.

Perhaps it was a second wind, or a final shot of adrenaline from the tumble, but she turned feral cat.

She clawed within her cage. She managed to work the axe head free, and started hacking at the soldier's chest and face. It was a head butt that broke his grip, though, and she fell away from his clasping arms.

An instant later she was seized by a second captor – this one impossible to escape. The blast flung her at the cliff face. She hit the rock with brutal intensity, back first. She knew immediately that something fundamental inside her had ruptured. She'd been too close to the explosion. Her eardrums had definitely gone. And there was blood, she knew that, while parts of her burned that really shouldn't.

So she was slow in realising that she was still sliding. Granite grated off fabric and flesh. Yet it was such a familiar situation that she didn't panic. She managed to flip herself and let muscle memory take over. Finger and boot tips scratched over the stone, trying to catch on any hold. She still clutched her axe, and started battering away at the uneven surface.

Eight agonising strikes later, the axe head finally caught in a crack. The action wrenched Lara's shoulder, and she howled. Her grip slipped by an inch and a half, but she held on. Somehow.

Heart humming and skin sticky, she rested her forehead against the stone.

A moment's breather and she could start climbing.

Just a moment to rest her eyes too. That was alright; she'd earned it.

_Just a moment._

She concentrated on her heartbeat, waiting for it to drop below her pulverising maximum.

When she opened her eyes again, she was staring at the pre-dawn sky instead of a wall of iron-grey rock. Her palms were empty.

"Oh."

_Now_  it was over.

Everything about her felt so gloriously light. Liberating.

Lara let her eyelids drop again to fully appreciate the sensation. She reclined back into the weightlessness.

It ended too soon.

She collided with something; something that wasn't unforgivable stone.

Lara slowly opened her eyes.

She was clutched in arms again, but this time gently – cradled like an infant. She looked up into Diana's concerned face, set against a sky the same shade as a week-old bruise. Stars blinked out as the archaeologist continued to gaze upwards.

"Diana?" Lara croaked. It felt too much like a dream. Or was it death – a true death this time?

"Please be still," the princess murmured.

"You're alive."

Lara went ignored. She glanced down. She expected to see the feathered wings of their mount. But there was nothing. They were still hundreds of feet from the bottom of the chasm. Static in the air.

The Englishwoman gasped. "You – you can  _fly_?!"

Diana's smile was clumsy; mildly embarrassed. "It appears so."

Lara laughed.

Mid-chuckle, blackness claimed her.

* * *

_Author's note: Faro is an original character creation. She first appeared in the one-shot To Break a Croft, as part of the Letters and Left Behinds collection._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Amazon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12180540) by [thefutureisequalaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefutureisequalaf/pseuds/thefutureisequalaf)




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